Grinberg: Automated Claims Handling? It's Coming

Friday, April 5, 2019 | 0

You know, dear readers, our workers’ compensation system is darn near perfect. Really, it is. Stop laughing.

Gregory Grinberg

All joking aside, it’s no closely guarded secret that adjusters are often swamped handling files. Huge caseloads require heroic efforts, and the queue to respond to injured workers can sometimes get a bit long, and that’s without mentioning the defense attorneys that write Russian novels of analysis letters and talk the poor adjuster’s ears off.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Fortunately, that may all change soon.

A tech startup called ChronWell is trying to bring a chatbot to market to help injured workers with basic tasks that don’t really need the skills of an experienced adjuster.

Scheduling appointments, appointment reminders, answering basic questions and, presumably, escalating to a live person when necessary, would be the key features.

If this effectively takes the load of adjusters, then it’s a good thing, right? Hopefully, though, this new wave of automated assistance will provide a better interaction experience than what I have experienced when dealing with such software or automated phone calls.

It will be interesting to see how effective the software is in assisting workers with accessing the medical provider network and getting appointments. It might also help defendants with documenting efforts to provide care in the face of MPN challenges.

Before you know it, the lawyers will be automated, too. But what, then, shall become of this poor, humble blogger?

Gregory Grinberg is a workers' compensation defense attorney at the Law Office of Gregory Grinberg, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. This post is reprinted with permission from Grinberg's WCDefenseCA blog.