The value of advocacy in effective workers' comp programs
Lumen Technologies’ Tara Acton shares the secrets behind their award-winning program.
Each year, National Underwriter Property & Casualty magazine bestows the Workers’ Compensation Risk Management Award for Excellence to three organizations that exhibit exceptional performance in mitigating workers’ comp risks. The 2023 nomination period will run from March 8th through April 3th and more details can be found here.
Among the criteria for the award are:
- the pure cost savings achieved in an organization’s overall workers’ comp spend;
- how they develop and maintain a culture of safety;
- a decrease in lost hours on the job due to injuries;
- having a close relationship with an entity’s TPA to ensure the timely and effective handling of claims;
- strong return-to-work programs; as well as several other contributing factors.
In 2022, the award was presented to the Los Angeles Unified School District, Lumen Technologies and TC Transcontinental Packaging.
In the latest Insurance Speak podcast, Tara Acton, director of claims and counsel for Lumen Technologies discusses the company’s award-winning program.
Lumen makes their injured employees a priority and Acton outlined four components of their workers’ compensation program that she attributes to the company’s success.
- They have a small number of adjusters who know the company well and effectively manage the program for them.
- There is a full-time employee advocate who has had a significant impact on the employee experience after an injury and helped to decrease the company’s litigation rate. “With the addition of the employee advocate, we had a 1% litigation rate in 2021 and it was 0% in 2022,” she shares.
- Lumen created several predictive models that help to identify claims that need special attention. Acton shared that company has a great deal of data that enabled them to create the models. “Predictive models are helpful in identifying possible problem cases and claims,” she said.
- The final component to the program is having telephonic nurse case managers who handle all of the cases and speak with their injured workers early in the process.
Acton also emphasized the importance of adopting best practices for the company and not just general recommendations for improvement. “Think about your audience. You know your company better than anyone and you shouldn’t be afraid to say ‘this is what we need.’”
To learn more about Lumen’s implementation of their program, listen to the podcast above or subscribe to Insurance Speak on Spotify, Apple Music or Libsyn.
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Advocacy drives the Lumen Technologies workers’ comp program