The ever-present immigration debate continues to spill into the workers compensation industry, with undocumented workers who are injured on the job left to consider whether to pursue medical care and benefits at the risk of arrest and deportation, experts say. Case law and state statutes vary widely regarding what benefits may be afforded to an injured undocumented worker, and these…
Dean Foods was ordered to pay $3.3 million in punitive damages after an Illinois jury found that the company retaliated against an employee who filed workers’ compensation claims. The jury found that Dean Foods refused to call Richard Jankowski back to work after his on-the-job injury and after he refused work that exceeded his medical restrictions, the Northwest Herald reported….
A former worker for Rock Island County, Illinois, once accused of accessing a co-worker’s computer, will receive thousands of dollars in a settlement with the county, including almost $26,000 for a workers’ compensation claim. Rock Island County board members this week approved the settlement, on the condition that Ronna Baney never seeks work with the county again, according to a…
High rates of employee turnover and a young workforce may be behind increases in workplace injuries reported in the retail sector, but male employees and aging workers are cost drivers in retail workers compensation, according to two reports released in November detailing injury and illness rates for retail workers in 2018. Occupational injury and illness rates for all industries have…
A lack of transparency in workers compensation pharmacy continues to be an issue for much of the industry, according to a CompPharma study released Tuesday. Opioid prescriptions and overall pharmacy spend declined between 2017 and 2018, reported Maggie Valley, North Carolina-based CompPharma in its 16th annual Survey of Prescription Drug Management in Workers Compensation study. However, 83% of the survey…
Compared with rising medical costs, cash benefits paid to injured workers are continuing to decline, which experts peg to safer workplaces curbing injury severity and time away and legislative changes that make it tougher to claim workers compensation among the reasons. “We’ve been doing an outstanding job in modernizing workers compensation and taking a lot of waste and abuse out…
The average medical payment per claim with more than seven days of lost time in Illinois was more than 15 percent higher than the median of 18 states studied, according to a recent study by the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI). For 2017 claims (at 12 months), the average medical payment per workers’ compensation claim was 15 percent higher than…
Retail industry workers miss an average of 24 days of work due to injuries, according to a report released Thursday by AmTrust Financial Services Inc. The average loss due to injury paid to retail workers is $11,641 for men and $7,030 for women, according to New York-based AmTrust’s Retail Risk Report, which analyzed 20,000 workers compensation insurance claims from its…
Nonfatal occupational illnesses and injuries held steady in 2018, marking the first time since 2009 that they did not decline, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. Private employers reported 900,380 occupational injuries or illnesses that caused a worker to miss a day of work in 2018, and 2.8 instances of occupational illnesses or injuries per 100 full-time equivalent workers…
A worker claims his employment was terminated after he made a claim for workers’ compensation benefits. Lyle Tonnon, who currently lives in Green Bay, Wisc., filed suit Sept. 30 against Belleville company Royalty Tech following his termination on Feb. 27, a week after he suffered a workplace injury. Tonnon is seeking more than $50,000 in damages, plus other amounts including…
