Workers exposed to tricholorethylene (TCE), a chemical once widely used to clean metal such as auto parts, may be at a significantly higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010.
“This is the first time a population-based study has confirmed case reports that exposure to TCE may increase a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease,” said study author Samuel Goldman, MD, with the Parkinson’s Institute in Sunnyvale, California, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “TCE was once a popular industrial solvent used in dry cleaning and to clean grease off metal parts, but due to other health concerns the chemical is no longer widely used.”
For the study, researchers obtained job histories from 99 pairs of twins in which only one of the twins had Parkinson’s disease. All of the twins were men and identified from the World War II-Veterans Twins Cohort study. Scientists used twins in the study because they are genetically identical or very similar and provide an ideal population for evaluating environmental risk factors.
The study found workers who were exposed to TCE were five and a half times more likely to have Parkinson’s disease than people not exposed to the chemical.
Those who were exposed to TCE had job histories including work as dry cleaners, machinists, mechanics or electricians.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, The Valley Foundation and the James and Sharron Clark Family Fund.
Article first appeared in ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2010)
New figures from the California Office of Self-Insurance Plans (OSIP) indicate that for the third year in a row, rising claim severity (average loss per claim), spurred by continued growth in medical costs, drove up workers’ compensation costs for cities, counties and other public agencies in the state last year.
OSIP’s initial summary of public self-insured data for fiscal year 2008/2009 offers the first look at the number of claims, total loss payments and total incurred (paid losses plus reserves for future payments) for the year ending June 30, 2009. The figures are compiled annually by the state from workers’ compensation reports submitted by hundreds of public self-insured entities other than the state itself — including cities and counties, local fire, school, transit, utility and special districts and joint powers authorities. The latest summary shows these employers provided workers’ compensation coverage to nearly 2.1 million California public workers whose wages and salaries totaled $98.6 billion during the 08/09 fiscal year.
Even though the number of covered employees in the latest summary was up 8% from the total noted in the FY 07/08 initial report, the number of reported claims edged down 1.9% to 126,029. Yet, despite fewer claims, public self-insureds’ paid losses at first report rose to $311 million, which was up $11.6 million (3.9%) from the comparable figure for FY07/08, and up $51 million (19.6%) from the post-reform low of $260 million in FY 05/06. A review of first report average paid losses broken out by benefit type shows most of the increase in public self-insured loss payments over the past three years was fueled by growth in medical losses, which have climbed 19.8% from the post-reform low of $1,073 to $1,285 last year, putting them back above the pre-reform level, while the average indemnity paid per claim rose 6.4% from $1,112 to $1,183.
Incurred results for public self-insured employers tell a similar story. Comparing initial report data from the last six years shows California public self-insured’s incurred losses at first report rose from a post-reform low of $852 million ($369.4 million indemnity + $483.5 million medical) in FY 05/06 to $1.01 billion ($393.7 million indemnity + $619.8 million medical) in FY 08/09 – up 18.9% in three years. The increase in total incurred losses since the post-reform low reflects a slight increase in the number of claims reported at the first valuation combined with higher average incurred per claim – primarily on the medical side. In the past three years, average incurred medical per public self-insured claim is up 21%, from $4,065 to $4,918, while average incurred indemnity has fluctuated less than $100 per claim over the last four years, coming in at $3,124 per claim for FY 08-09, up less than 0.6% from the $3,106 level reported for FY 05-06.
CWCI has prepared a detailed report on OSIP’s latest public self-insured data that tracks changes in the volume of California public self-insured claims, and in the total and average paid and incurred amounts for these claims. The report, with initial data on FY 08-09 claims reported to OSIP and more developed data (2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th reports) for the most recent six years available, is n the Research section of the CWCI website. OSIP also compiles private self-insured claims data, but it is reported on a calendar year basis, so updated figures from California’s private self-insurers will be released this summer.
18 Things You Need When Shopping for Work Comp Insurance
Before you go shopping for a workers’ compensation insurance policy you need to put together all the paperwork you will need. Keep this information in one place and use an Excel spreadsheet (if possible). The spreadsheet will be a useful tool down the line when you want to calculate rates and premiums.
1. Payroll Reports
Payroll reports showing how much employees are paid and classification codes are used to calculate premiums. Include work site locations and specify if the type of work done varies from location to location.
2. Classification Codes
Call your state insurance commission to obtain a list of classification codes used to determine workers’ comp rates for various industries. Find the rates that apply to your industry, as it is the rate driving your premium to a large extent. Rates vary depending on the kind of industry – i.e., manufacturing rates differ from office industry rates. If you already have a workers’ comp policy, you can use the codes you have, otherwise, bring written job descriptions to help your agent or broker assign the most accurate code possible.
3. Who is Covered and Who is Not
Determine who is and who is not covered by workers’ comp so you get the most accurate coverage. Contact the department of labor or the state department of workers’ compensation for this information. Sometimes very small businesses aren’t required to pay workers’ comp if they have less than 3–5 employees. You should know this before you make any purchases.
4. Accident Reports for past several years.
Compile accident reports for several past years. Include all current workers’ compensation activity to date – outstanding claims, people out on comp, types of injuries and outcomes.
5. Number of Covered Employees
There are cases when certain employees are not eligible for workers’ compensation coverage. Contact your state workers’ compensation commission to obtain this information.
6. Breakdown of Covered Workers by Job Classification
Includes the owner, full and part time employees, contractors, consultants.
Those of us who cook know the time-tested technique for testing spaghetti doneness: toss a few strands up against a wall and if it sticks, it’s done – if not, well, it falls off the wall. So, what does spaghetti have to do with assessing your workers’ compensation program?
Many companies use the dartboard approach to control workers’ comp costs. They look into the global “pot” of work comp practices, pick out one or two, toss a solution against the wall, and hope it sticks. In other words, without really knowing what to do, they decide to “fix” some part of their WC program – an unplanned, unsuccessful and most likely costly approach.
Unfortunately, more than 75% of companies try to work backwards toward improvement by reviewing the capabilities of their service providers and vendors rather than assessing the key problem areas in their own companies todetermine the types of services ultimately needed.
Worker’s comp costs cannot be controlled on a “hit or miss” basis. A solid workers’ compensation program begins with a careful assessment of what is in place now, rather than assessing your service provider’s capabilities. Only by analyzing your company’s current trends and weaknesses are you then able to select appropriate solutions and vendors to integrate into a comprehensive cost control program without overlapor gaps.
A reasoned, impartial assessment and needs analysis is an indispensable part of an overall quality improvement process. It means determining how effective existing program elements are, not merely whether the elements exist. Solutions and recommendations for changes, upgrades or revisions in current practices are then based on a complete understanding of the “key cost drivers,” factors at the root cause of your company’s high costs.
Where Do I Start? Where Do I Start?
As companies reposition themselves to be more cost effective and competitive in today’s marketplace, a thorough assessment of a company’s workers’ compensation program identifies problem areas responsible for escalating costs. Only after identifying the causes of these costs, can a company evaluate its program and develop a strategic plan to control and reduce workers’ compensation costs.
Workers’ Compensation is a single line of insurance or business considered part of the Property Casualty group of coverage encompassing general liability, property, auto and others lines. Workers’ Compensation insurance may be purchased as part of a package or “mono-line,” as an individual policy. There are choices involved and decisions to be made in purchasing workers’ compensation coverage just as when you purchase your own auto policy and select a deductible.
Generally, in purchasing a guaranteed cost policy, your premium remains at the price quoted regardless of the cost of the losses. Because premiums are in part based on payroll multiplied by a rate, premium audits are conducted generating either additional premium or a premium refund. Other than that, the price paid in the end should be the price your agent/broker negotiated and quoted. The insurance company funds losses and bears the lion’s share of the risk however it’s in an insured’s best interests to reduce claim frequency and severity to minimize loss costs. Loss experience is another facet of premium calculation and out of control losses will drive premium costs up.
Depending on the financial strength of your company and your appetite for risk, there are also programs available allowing a company to participate in the losses financially. These programs include deductibles and retro’s (retrospective rating). These vehicles allow a company to participate to a large degree financially to control their insurance and claim costs and essentially bear much of the risk themselves. Such programs may make good sense for organizations with sophisticated loss prevention and strong claim management or oversight in place. (workersxzcompxzkit)
While workers’ compensation policies may be generic in meeting your statutory requirements, claims and loss control services vary greatly and differentiate one company from another. Choose wisely. The effectiveness of these areas will reduce loss costs and even prevent losses from occurring, which in turn reduce your premium. Evaluate the financial strength of your company, the loss prevention and claim management programs in place and importantly, the appetite for risk at your organization, to decide whether a guaranteed cost or shared risk program is the way to go. Also be sure to evaluate the financial strength of the insurance carriers under consideration.
Author Robert Elliott, executive vice president, Amaxx Risks Solutions, Inc. has worked successfully for 20 years with many industries to reduce Workers’ Compensation costs, including airlines, health care, manufacturing, printing/publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. He can be contacted at: Robert_Elliott@ReduceYourWorkersComp.com or 860-553-6604.
30 December, 2009 08:27:19 Republished with permission from ReduceYourWorkersComp.com
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard, Ap Medical Writer
WASHINGTON – Emergency health alerts for the Facebook generation? The nation’s ambulance crews are pushing a virtual medical ID system to rapidly learn a patient’s health history during a crisis — and which can immediately text-message loved ones that the person is headed for a hospital.
The Web-based registry, invisibleBracelet.org, started in Oklahoma and got a boost this fall when the state’s government made the program an optional health benefit for its own employees.
Now the Invisible Bracelet attempts to go nationwide as the American Ambulance Association next month begins training its medics, who in turn will urge people in their communities to sign up.
For $5 a year, basic health information and up to 10 emergency contacts are stored under a computer-assigned PIN number that’s kept on a wallet card with your driver’s license, a key fob or a sticker on an insurance card.
It’s a complement to the medical alert jewelry that people with diabetes, asthma and a host of other conditions have used for decades to signal their needs in an emergency.
And it comes as the American College of Emergency Physicians is trying to determine just what information is the most critical for medics and ER doctors to find when you’re too ill or injured to answer questions, so that competing emergency-alert technologies don’t miss any of the essentials.
“Too many times, we don’t have the information to help us treat the patients correctly,” says James Finger, president of the American Ambulance Association, the largest network of emergency medical service providers. → Continue reading Last Minute Gift Idea – “Invisible” MedAlet Bracelet?
Nothing has had more bearing on health IT throughout the ’00s than Title II of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, otherwise known as the administrative simplification regulations of HIPAA. Together, the rules on privacy and security of health information, on transactions and code sets for electronic data interchange and on the National Provider Identifier system have had an impact on pretty much every aspect of health IT this decade.
The rules didn’t start to become enforceable until the privacy compliance date of April 14, 2003, but healthcare providers, insurers, vendors, data processors and pretty much everyone else that handled personally identifiable health information–whether on paper or computer–have had to consider HIPAA since proposed regulations began to appear in 1998.
The code sets for EDI transactions, which became mandatory on Oct. 16, 2003–even though CMS wasn’t fully ready to accept such transactions then–were supposed to represent the heart of administrative simplification. They were intended to standardize billing, insurance eligibility checking, remittance advice, electronic payments and other communications. But HHS continued to allow private insurers to include their own addenda to each code, wiping out true standardization.
There were other headaches and criticisms, too. Privacy advocates complained about the May 2002 modifications to the privacy rule, which allowed disclosure of protected health information without patient consent for the purposes of “treatment, payment and healthcare operations.” Some vendors of practice management and hospital information systems–particularly companies that also owned lucrative clearinghouses–took their time in making their products capable of producing standard HIPAA transactions. CMS let the NPI compliance date slide several times by allowing for contingency plans. And all along, the various parts of HHS and the Department of Justice that had jurisdiction over HIPAA have been lax with their enforcement.
As the decade ends, HIPAA keeps evolving. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted in February 2009, effectively removes the “treatment, payment and healthcare operations” exemption in the absence of patient consent. It requires covered entities to notify patients of certain privacy and security breaches and calls on HHS to develop tougher regulations. Perhaps most significantly, ARRA for the first time gives states the authority to enforce HIPAA regulations.
Whatever you call it — H1N1, Swine Flu — the illness du jour is definitely a distraction to your entire workforce. From fears of the coughing co-worker in the next cubicle to heated debates over whether or not to vaccinate, everyone has the flu on the brain these days. So how can you keep the panic to a minimum and maximize productivity?
Communicate your contingency plans. People have to be wondering what your company has planned should this turn into a full-blown pandemic. Assuming your company has a plan, it’s time to make sure all your workers are in on it.
Educate employees. An informed workforce is a less jumpy workforce. Try an info blitz on H1N1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a Web page devoted to the virus. Your state health department also has info. You could even bring in a doctor to debunk myths.
Encourage short breaks. When employees are stretched too thin, their immune systems can get run down — increasing their chances of getting sick. Keep an eye out for staffers who look stressed or overworked, and encourage them to take a break.
Know the law. What’s worse than having employees out sick? Getting hit with a labor law violation because of your policies about sick workers run afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Here is a list of guidelines that’ll help make sure your policies are OK with Uncle Sam.
PHISHING SCAM – CDC Sponsored State Vaccination Program for H1N1
CDC has received reports of fraudulent emails (phishing) referencing a CDC sponsored State Vaccination Program for H1N1. The messages request that users create a personal H1N1 (swine flu) Vaccination Profile on the CDC.gov web site.
An example of the phishing email is below:
Users that click on the embedded link in the email are at risk of having malicious code installed on their system. CDC reminds users to take the following steps to reduce the risk of being a victim of a phishing attack:
Do not open or respond to unsolicited email messages.
Do not click links embedded in emails from unknown senders.
Use caution when entering personal information online.
Update anti-virus, spyware, firewall, and anti-spam software regularly.
Alcohol problems affect all employers, with an average of 9 percent of U.S. workers drinking in ways that contribute to absenteeism, higher health care costs and lost productivity.
Employees in the hospitality,construction and wholesale industries,in particular, are significantly more likely to be dependent on or abuse alcohol, according to Workplace Screening & Brief Intervention: What Employers Can and Should Do About Excessive Alcohol Use, a report issued by Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems at The George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. Ensuring Solutions researchers found that men working in the hospitality and construction industries are approximately 50 percent more likely to have an alcohol related problem than female workers.
In wholesale trade, men are almost three times more likely to have an alcohol problem than women. In addition, more than 18 percent of young workers between the ages of 18 and 25 have an alcohol related problem,compared to 7 percent of workers 26 and workers 26 employees represented in older.
“Most are not dependent on alcohol,”said Eric Goplerud, Ph.D., director of Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems and lead researcher. “But they do use alcohol in ways that lead to short term safety problems and long term of Ensuring survey results have been used to develop a web based calculator that employers and providers can use to estimate the impact of alcohol to develop the potential cost savings to problems and through workplace screening and brief intervention.
