From Bob's Cluttered Desk

I must admit that the last couple weeks have been a whirlwind. When I published an article entitled “Who Will Lead the National Conversation on Workers’ Compensation?” just over two weeks ago, I had no idea I would be announcing today that the “Conversation” is about to begin. But that is just what has happened,…

Imagine you are at the dentist, and you are in need of a crown. Many of us have been through this routine. You know what to expect. The dentist finishes grinding your existing tooth down, and messy molds and impressions are made. A temporary crown is fashioned and placed, and you are sent home with…

My company announced last week that it would be hosting a Workers' Compensation Best Blogs program to “select and recognize outstanding original content for the industry”. It was an announcement that has been met with a fair amount of excitement and very positive responses. There have also been some questions, and I wanted to take…

You have to admire employers who want to acknowledge long term employees for their years of dedicated service. Such was the situation with the city of Cadiz, Spain, when they prepared to present a service award to an employee who had given two decades of his life to toiling for the local government. Except they…

The conference season is getting ready to fire up once more, and workers' compensation road warriors are again preparing for the hazards and rewards of attending multiple educational events around the nation. One of the first major events of the year is the 32nd Annual Issues & Research Conference produced by the Workers' Compensation Research…

I think it has to be one of the worst things a marketing professional has to face; dealing with the death of a participant in a fund raiser named in your honor. It has to be even worse when your product, while known for being delicious, is not generally recognized for its healthful and rejuvenating…

Frankly, it's about damn time. A doctor in Southern California has been sentenced to a minimum of 30 years to life in prison for over-prescribing drugs that caused the fatal overdose of three of her patients. It is the first murder conviction of its kind in the country. We need some more of those. Killing…

I was speaking with a state workers' compensation regulator recently, when our conversation turned to a number of the issues facing the workers' comp industry these days. We spoke about ProPublica, Opt Out and legal challenges to exclusive remedy that the industry is facing. We talked about the regulatory challenges the states are confronting. And…

I have been an employer for many years now, and over the course of my somewhat varied career I have encountered many strange and unique tales. In fact, it is easy to assume that after 30 plus years of professional management, almost 17 of them in workers' compensation, one might be honestly able to say…

Okay, the people yelling at me weren't really idiots; but they were angry. It is just that after an extended time of steady abuse, they all seemed like idiots. Or ingrates. But they really weren't. Many of them were pretty pleasant, despite the issues they encountered. The angry ones were just people who were rightfully…