Tag: 2020 News

If workers’ comp professionals weren’t already hopping on the tech-train, a report in Risk and Insurance claims they certainly are now as much of the workforce transitioned to telecommuting when COVID-19 collided with our realities back in March.

Digitization has been well on its way for decades, but the suddenly urgent need for remote work changed what it means to utilize technology.

A July 23 survey of 400 American workers’ compensation professionals, conducted by Lightico and Sapiens, highlighted the challenges and burdens of an amplified technology surge.

According to the report, technology is most easily and efficiently leveraged by companies with 500 to 1000 insureds. Forty-two percent of professionals within companies of that size said their organization is leveraging technology to its maximum ability. Forty-four percent of companies of the same size said that their processes have already been completely automated. Quick Improvements in New Environments

In the survey, 87% of respondents claim that they are currently leveraging data to improve underwriting and product development to drive revenues and profitability.

In addition to increased investment in technology, here’s what insurance companies are considering as they prepare for a new normal:

— 76% of respondents are rethinking injury prevention training and education due to the new threat of COVID-19;
— 86% of workers’ comp professionals are considering incorporating telemedicine into their overall medical cost containment strategy;
— 89% are actively exploring better ways to communicate with employers and injured workers through multi-channel communication alternatives, such as texting;
— 79% are looking at incorporating additional services or programs to insureds to offset premium impacts; and
— 93% have seen a greater need for offering more flexible payment options to policyholders and injured workers (i.e. pre-paid debit card, ACH, virtual card, etc.).

A majority of respondents cited processes such as paperwork, compliance signatures, document collection, claims management and payments as the most burdensome during this transition to digitization.

Preparing for the new normal requires rethinking not just how technology can apply to these administrative processes, but every aspect of a program. Nearly all respondents, for example, are utilizing digitization to attract the next generation of claims handlers.

While the coronavirus has upended virtually every industry and aspect of life, it has also created a window for growth. For workers’ comp, it’s looking like that window will most likely be a computer screen.

Ride-hailing will continue in California for the time being as Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. won more time Thursday in their appeal of a ruling that ordered them to immediately classify their ride-hailing drivers as employees in compliance with state law.

The companies have five days to agree to expedited procedures outlined by a state appeals court judge Thursday, which includes consolidating both appeals and requiring the companies to submit sworn statements by Sept. 4 from their chief executives that the companies have developed plans to obey an Aug. 10 order to classify their drivers as employees instead of independent contractors.

“Should Lyft or Uber fail to comply with these procedures, the People may apply to this court to vacate this stay,” wrote Stuart Pollak, presiding judge of the First District Court of Appeal in California. He set an Oct. 13 date for oral arguments in the case.

Uber and Lyft confirmed they will not be shutting down their ride-hailing services, as they had planned to do if they failed to secure an emergency stay.

“While we won’t have to suspend operations tonight, we do need to continue fighting for independence plus benefits for drivers,” said Julie Wood, spokeswoman for Lyft.

Uber spokesman Davis White said, “We are glad that the Court of Appeals recognized the important questions raised in this case, and that access to these critical services won’t be cut off while we continue to advocate for drivers’ ability to work with the freedom they want.”

In May, California’s attorney general and the city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego sued Uber and Lyft, accusing them of failing to obey California law by continuing to consider their drivers as independent contractors, and asked the court for an injunction to force the companies to classify them as employees. A San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled Aug. 10 that the ride-hailing giants must immediately comply but gave them a 10-day stay for their appeals. That expired Thursday.

The two companies are counting on California voters to approve Proposition 22, an initiative they and other gig companies have poured $110 million into to exempt gig workers from the law, Assembly Bill 5, which became effective Jan. 1.

With Prop. 22, the companies are proposing a “third way” that they say gives additional pay and benefits to drivers and preserves their flexibility to choose when they work. But the initiative falls short of classifying drivers as employees with all the benefits that entails, including being eligible for unemployment insurance.

The number of California workers’ compensation claims for COVID-19 continues to climb, as data from the Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) show that as of August 10, there were 9,515 claims reported for the month of July, bringing the total for the year to 31,612 claims, or 10.2% of all California job injury claims reported for accident year (AY) 2020.

Those claims include 140 death claims, up from 66 reported as of July 6.

Updated figures for May and June show sharp increases in COVID-19 claims for each of those months, as the number of COVID-19 claims with June injury dates more than doubled from 4,438 claims as of July 6 to 10,528 claims as of August 10, while COVID-19 claims with May injury dates rose from 3,889 cases to 4,606 claims (+18.4%), indicating a time lag in the filing, reporting, and recording of many COVID-19 claims.

Using claim development factors the California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI) projects there could ultimately be 29,354 COVID-19 claims with July injury dates and 56,082 COVID-19 claims with January through July injury dates.

Health care workers continue to account for the largest share of California’s COVID-19 claims, filing 38.7% of the claims recorded for the first 7 months of this year, followed by public safety/government workers who accounted for 15.8%. Rounding out the top 5 industries based on COVID-19 claim volume were retail trade (7.9%), manufacturing (7.0%), and transportation (4.7%).

The updated data is included in the latest iteration of CWCI’s COVID-19 and Non-COVID-19 Interactive Claim Application, an online data tool that integrates data from CWCI, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the DWC to provide detailed information on California workers’ comp claims from comparable periods of 2019 and 2020.

The new version features data on 710,224 claims from the first 7 months of AY 2019 and AY 2020, including all 31,612 COVID-19 claims from AY 2020. The application allows users to explore and analyze:

CWCI will continue to update the application and expand its features and functions as more data on claim type and average and systemwide costs become available..

California received a batch of mostly positive pandemic-related developments on Monday with data showing that the number of people dying of COVID-19 is beginning to decline and hospitalization rates continue to fall steadily.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also announced that San Diego County, the state’s second largest, has made enough progress against the novel coronavirus that it could be removed from the watch list as early as this week.

In one of the key pandemic metrics, the seven-day daily rolling average of fatalities fell to fewer than 130 deaths per day on Sunday for the first time since last month, according to a Times analysis of state data. The number of hospital patients with COVID-19 has declined steadily for a month, the data show.

Community spread appears to be falling, too: The share of Californians who tested positive over a two-week period dipped to 6.5% Monday, an early indication that California is “stabilizing, and moving broadly in the right direction,” Newsom said.

The promising data come two weeks after Newsom touted a falling infection rate, then backtracked after officials found errors in how the data had been reported. On Monday, for the first time since the data breakdown, the state updated its watchlist of areas with high case rates, offering a mixed picture around the state.

Although Santa Cruz was taken off the list, four small counties – Amador, Mendocino, Inyo and Calaveras – were added and must close businesses by Thursday.

The infection rate in San Diego has stayed beneath 100 cases per 100,000 residents for nearly a week. “It’s extraordinarily good news, speaking on behalf not just of the county but the state of California,” Newsom said.

Los Angeles County continues to make progress toward getting off the watchlist, with the average daily number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths falling steadily, said Barbara Ferrer, the head of the Department of Public Health.

The county meets five of the six metrics used to measure progress against the pandemic, including testing more than 150 people per 100,000 residents per day, and maintaining a healthy margin of available intensive-care beds and ventilators.

The county continues to make progress on reducing community transmission to meet the most stubborn benchmark: a 14-day average of fewer than 100 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents for three consecutive days.

Last week, the county reported 335 cases per 100,000 residents; on Sunday, the rate was 298 cases per 100,000.

Daily hospitalizations in Los Angeles County have fallen 37% over a month, from 2,219 cases per day in mid-July, to 1,388 cases in mid-August, Ferrer said. The average number of daily deaths has fallen from 43 to 30 over the same time period, she said.

The hospitalization rate data is “one of our best indicators that our efforts over the last few weeks are actually working,” Ferrer said, in part because it was not affected by the data reporting errors.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an expansion of the federal Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program to include disability or death from COVID-19 among the criteria for payments.

The Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program (PSOB) provides a death benefit to the eligible survivors of Federal, state or local public safety officers whose death was the direct and proximate result of a personal (traumatic) injury sustained in the line of duty (certain fatal, line of duty heart attacks and strokes are also covered).

The act also provides a disability benefit to eligible public safety officers who have been permanently and totally disabled as the direct result of a catastrophic personal injury sustained in the line of duty. The injury must permanently prevent the officer from performing any gainful work.

The amount of the PSOB benefit is $359,316.00 for eligible deaths and disabilities occurring on or after October 1, 2018. The amount of the PSOB educational assistance benefit for one month of full-time attendance on or after October 1, 2018 is $1,224.00.

The Safeguarding America’s First Responders Act of 2020 is similar to the HEROES Act, which secured benefits for the families of those who gave their lives during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The new Act extends the Public Safety Officers Benefits Program by creating a presumption that if a first responder is diagnosed with the coronavirus within 45 days of their last day on the job, the Department of Justice will treat it as a line of duty incident and provide the payments.

The Act provides that “..unless competent medical evidence establishes that the death of a public safety officer (as defined in section 1204 of title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (34 U.S.C. 10284)) was directly and proximately caused by something other than COVID-19, COVID-19 (or complications therefrom) suffered by the public safety officer shall be presumed to constitute a personal injury within the meaning of section 1201(a) of title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (34 U.S.C. 10281(a)), sustained in the line of duty by the officer..“

Before, the illness had to be officially linked to a job-related source. That burden of proof required painstaking contact tracing efforts.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who introduced the measure in the U.S. Senate, said the law was needed to keep the survivors of first responders who die from COVID-19 from having to prove their loved one contracted it on the job.