Dr. John F. Burton, Jr. died on August 12th at the age of 91. If that name does not immediately register with you, and you work in this industry, I would gently suggest that is a gap worth closing. Give me a few hundred words and I will try to close it. Let me start…
The View From the Chair
We measure everything in this industry. We measure lag time, closure ratios, average duration, medical spend per claim, litigation rates, attorney involvement, reserve accuracy, and the number of days between the injury and the first indemnity payment. We have dashboards. We have benchmarking studies. We have entire conference tracks devoted to measuring things, and then…
The Succession Plan Named Diane
Every organization in workers’ compensation has a succession plan. I know this because I have asked. Repeatedly. At conferences, on panels, in the hallway outside the ballroom where the coffee is somehow both burnt and cold. And to their credit, people always have an answer for me. The answer is usually a name. Somewhere in…
Partnership Isn’t Optional: The Best Recovery Plan Fails Without a Willing Driver
There’s a line in Chapter 11 of my book, Thank You for Holding. Your Injury Is Important to Us, that makes some readers wince. It goes something like this: impairment is a fact, disability is a choice. People hear that and immediately assume I’m about to tell injured workers to rub some dirt on it and…