Are Injured Workers Avoiding Comp?

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 0

The Insider has come across an intriguing but ultimately frustrating study concerning the under-reporting of workers' comp claims in New Hampshire. Under the auspices of the state Department of Health and Human Services, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey (with the unfortunate acronym of BRFSS) conducted phone interviews with nearly 7,000 adults who were employed during 2008. About 340 people (close to 5%) reported that they had been injured at work sometime during the prior year, that is, injured seriously enough to require "medical advice or treatment." (Sigh, when you include "medical advice," you might be including the first-aid-only incidents that should be excluded from the study.)

Here is the interesting Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 − if somewhat compromised Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 − nugget from the study. Among those who were injured, only 54% reported that their treatment was paid ("all or in part") by workers compensation. The remaining 46% reported their treatment was paid for by private or government insurance (25%) or by other means (21%). Unfortunately, by the time you get down to the 150 people in the non-comp segment, the combination of small numbers and ambiguous questions seriously reduces our ability to draw any meaningful conclusions. The study may indicate substantial under-reporting, but to know for sure, the researchers are going to have to ask some more questions.

Focus on Comp

Because the survey is conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, the focus on workers comp is, pardon the expression, almost accidental. In fact, the 2008 survey was the first time they included questions about workplace injuries and payment for related treatment. While I applaud their interest in comp, I hope they would consider adding just a few questions to make the survey more effective. Assuming the survey guarantees anonymity, the questions might include:

• For those reporting that they are self-employed, ask whether they carry workers' comp insurance (it is optional in New Hampshire).
• For those reporting that they were injured, the follow-up questions should be limited to those who secured outside medical treatment (and not those seeking only "advice").
• If comp paid just "part" of the treatment cost, who paid the remainder?
• For any worker whose treatment was not covered 100% by workers' comp, ask whether they paid anything out of pocket (which would be a violation of comp law).
• If treatment was covered by a non-comp insurer, ask whether workers were instructed by their employer to report the injury as "non-work-related" (employers giving this instruction and employees following it are committing insurance fraud).
• For any workers reporting injuries, ask whether they lost time from work due to the injury and whether they were paid for the time they missed. (Some employers are so determined to avoid the comp system, they pay wages for employees missing time due to injury, even beyond the state's three-day waiting period.)