More Claims, Longer Wait Times: How Four Factors Are Influencing The Direction Of Workers’ Compensation

Dr. Richard Victor, founder of WCRI and senior fellow at the Sedgwick Institute, recently released a book focusing on futuristic scenarios for the workers’ compensation industry in macroeconomic terms.

Victor’s book, entitled ​Scenarios for the 2030s: Threats and Opportunities for Workers’ Compensation Systems​, is a wide-ranging and rigorously researched manifesto, addressing everything from the intricacies of labor shortages in the U.S. to health care reform and case shifting.

For Victor though, the issues can be thought of as more of a road map of what to anticipate rather than a devastating prophecy. The volume fills 300 pages with 25 pages of diverse references, lending credibility to the idea that the scenarios presented are ​not​, as Victor put it, a “pie in the sky fantasy.”

“Much of what we did at WCRI was to look at specific features of workers’ compensation and their performance, often using historic data,” Victor said. “I thought what was useful for me to think about was to look forward rather than backward,” he said.

“There’s a combination of forces that, when converged, could lead to as much as a tripling of workers’ compensation costs for employers, and that doesn’t require that benefits increase to injured workers.