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Workers Compensation Insurance <<continued from previous page
Some states discontinued their second injury funds following passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Although the ADA requires employers to maintain confidentiality about employees’ disabilities, the confidentiality rule does not apply to communications with state workers compensation authorities or second injury funds.
WHAT CAN I DO TO REDUCE MY WORKERS COMP PREMIUMS?
- Manage Your Risks
- Take Advantage of Saving Opportunities
- Be Sure Your Premium is Correctly Figured
- Raise Your Deductibles
- Try to Avoid Assigned Risk
- Coordinate Disability Programs
Manage Your Risks – Most small companies do not believe they can afford to hire a
risk manager. Nevertheless, someone in the company should have a continuing responsibility
for loss control and the management of workers comp claims. This involves a variety
of programs to keep workers safe, the medical management of claims and early return
to work for any injured workers.
In some states insurers must provide accident prevention
services to employers. Even if not required to do so by law, the majority of workers
comp insurers can help you improve safety. In some states, employers are required
by law to set up safety committees and other programs to deal with unsafe conditions
in the workplace. Even when not required by law, safety committees can be very effective
at reducing accidents. For example, after UPS set up worker safety committees at
each of its locations to identify the most frequent workplace accidents and took
measures to reduce them, injuries that caused workers to take time off from work
decreased by 59 percent.
You may also be legally required to have a written injury
and illness prevention program. Again, even if not legally required to do so, having
and following a written program can help reduce accidents.
Take Advantage of Savings
Available in Your State – Several states allow merit rating credits. Smaller businesses
that typically pay $5,000 in premiums or less may be entitled to a credit of 5 to
15 percent if they have not had any lost-
Raise Your Deductibles – A majority
of states provide for optional medical deductibles in workers comp insurance policies
as a cost saving measure. Deductibles tend to encourage greater safety consciousness
on the part of the employer who must pay the deductible amount.
Try to Avoid Assigned
Risk – Cutting down on your claims is the best way to stay out of the state’s assigned
risk plan, or insurer of last resort, which usually costs more. You may have been
put into assigned risk without knowing it. Ask your agent to check on your status.
If you have been put in assigned risk, find out from your state workers comp agency
if rates are higher. If they are, make a concerted effort to get other insurance.
Just because one agent is unable to find something better for you doesn’t necessarily
mean that it doesn’t exist. Talk with other agents, investigate group self insurance
programs that may be available in your state and talk with other people in your industry
and owners of other businesses of similar size and age and with a similar risk level.
Coordinate Disability Programs – This option isn’t available everywhere, but in some
states businesses are trying to bring costs under control through the coordination
of workers compensation, health care and disability benefit plans. The integration
of workers compensation and other employee benefit programs is a broad concept that
ranges from a simple marketing approach that promises savings from using the same
insurer for both coverages to programs that offer a managed care approach to the
management of all types of disability, regardless of whether they are work-
Besides limiting overlapping programs and streamlining administration, proponents
say the change to a broad approach addresses the increasing difficulty of distinguishing
between work-
CAN AN EMPLOYEE WHO HAS AN ACCIDENT SUE ME?
Prior to the states’ adoption of the workers compensation system in the first half
of the Twentieth Century, injured workers sued their employers after workplace accidents.
This was a long, cumbersome and costly process from which the worker might gain nothing
if the court failed to find the employer totally responsible for the injury. With
so few employers liable for workplace accidents, support for injured workers and
the families of deceased workers was a societal problem.
The workers compensation
system was adopted to provide injured workers and their dependents timely compensation
became regardless of who was at fault for a workplace accident. As part of the compromise
that made the employer liable for work-
Nevertheless, there are certainly instances where “exclusive remedy”
may not apply and injured workers may sue their employers. Conditions under which
such suits are lawful vary among the states. In Florida, for example, injured employees
may sue their employers in the following situations:
- The employer commits an intentional and deliberate harmful act or engages in conduct that is certain to result in injury or death
- An employee sexually harasses another employee
- The employer violates the law prohibiting the firing, coercing or intimidating of an employee due to a workers comp claim
- The employer has violated federal law regarding housing and transportation of migrant workers
- The injury is excluded from coverage by workers compensation (such as a claim for psychological stress injury without any physical injury, a type of claim that is not compensable by workers comp in Florida)
Source: Insurance Information Institute www.iii.org
Workers Compensation Insurance
