As a California employer, you’re already well-acquainted with the high costs associated with workplace injuries.
But while all employers are required to have workers compensation insurance to cover employees injured on the job, many don’t know that there are things you can do to help keep the cost of injuries and insurance down.
Having a “cost-containment plan” for your company can help reduce the costs associated with injuries by reducing the likelihood and severity of injuries, managing health care costs, getting injured workers back on the job faster, and catching fraud and abuse early.
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Developing a workplace injury cost-containment plan generally involves: 1) assessing current policies and procedures, 2) articulating recommendations for improvement, 3) designing and developing new policies and protocols, and 4) implementing the new plan. Going through these four stages will help ensure that your cost-containment plan is effective and complete.
As you go through each of the stages to develop your cost-containment plan, stay focused on those areas that tend to drive up costs, such as:
- Failing to provide ongoing safety training to employees and supervisors
- Failing to communicate effectively with employees about safety policies and procedures
- Failing to secure management commitment to a company plan
- Failing to work effectively with insurance companies and insurance adjusters
- Failing to have and implement an effective return-to-work and transitional duty program
- Failing to recognize fraud and abuse, and
- Failing to use a “holistic” approach to workers’ compensation cost containment, focusing on a single area (such as reducing medical bills) rather than the system as a whole
We’ll have more on workplace injury cost-containment plans, and what they can do for your business, in an upcoming issue of California Employer Advisor.