Breaking New Ground: Providing Health Risk Management to Reduce Workers’ Compensation Costs
Presented by Claire Brockbank, MS & Janet Byrne, CPA
For the past twenty-five years, workers’ compensation carriers have made significant up-front capital investments in workplace safety and managed care strategies. These have had a positive impact in the form of reduced workers’ compensation claims and costs. Pinnacol Assurance believes that further gains will require focusing on the health of individual employees before they encounter the workers’ compensation system as an injured worker. Although data supporting the bottom line efficacy of wellness based on health care costs is finally emerging, it is almost completely absent for workers’ compensation. And yet, the limited data that is available – primarily for large employers – has led Pinnacol to feel that testing the feasibility of providing health risk management (HRM) to a cross-section of Colorado employers will be worthwhile. This session will provide an overview of the program, the demographics of the participants, and the challenges of structuring interventions that do not rely on health insurance coverage.
