Insurers Should "Hold Doctors To Account" For Workers’ Comp Claims Delta

The chief executive of a global claims administration firm is calling on workers’ compensation insurers to start holding doctors to account for what he describes as the “defined delta” between workers’ compensation claims and private health or non-occupational disability claims.

This so-called “delta” — raised with Insurance Business by Charles Taylor TPA president and CEO Christopher Schaffer — embodies the trend where workers’ compensation claims are costing more and taking longer to resolve than private healthcare claims in the non-occupational environment.

“There’s just no reason for that,” said Schaffer. “If you’re injured at work, there’s no reason why it should cost more or take longer to recover than if you were injured outside of work — and yet, that’s what’s happening. It’s a delta that’s easy to identify, and the workers’ compensation doctors are complicit in that delta. I think we as an industry have to try to close that delta and hold doctors to account.”

One way the insurance industry can do that, according to Schaffer, is by promoting evidence-based medicine and using claims data to challenge the workers’ compensation status quo.