3 Minute Monday – Commercial Property Crisis

A person standing on top of a rock.

The insurance industry is beginning to see an alarming trend of workers’ compensation claims roll in from extended mask wearing.

Of course, the CDC recommends the masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, OSHA approved air quality monitors also indicate the masks do create a hazardous breathing environment. This is leading to negative side effects such as anxiety, headaches, increased heart rate, dizziness and fatigue.

To be clear, I am not condemning the masks. My only interest is to make sure insureds aware of the potential negative side effects so that you can take the appropriate steps to mitigate the impact on the health of your employees.

For more information you can visit: Mask Wearing Prevents COVID Spread; But Could They Also Be Ushering in Workers’ Comp Claims?

Below are Four Steps for combating the effects of wearing the mask from PN Medical.

Combating the Effects of Mask Wearing

TAKE 5 QUALITY BREATHS

  • A Quality Breath = 4 seconds inhale through the nose, 6 second exhale through the mouth. 2 second pause. Repeat 5 times.

LONGER AND SLOWER

  • Notice people around you. Some change their breathing patterns while wearing a mask. Combat this by taking longer slower breaths while you are wearing yours.

TAKE MASK BREAKS

  • If you are wearing a mask for extended periods of time, take breaks from the mask periodically when it is safe. Follow Step 1 above.
  • Breaks between times wearing a mask can reduce the negative effects.

RESPIRATORY MUSCLE TRAINING (RMT)

  • RMT helps to improve the function of respiratory muscles.
  • For 5 minutes in the morning and 5 at night, practice RMT.
  • RMT is valuable in the face of COVID-19 (Severin et al 2020)

If you have any questions, I can be reached by email at ryanhanigan@jjdoorhy.com or through PM here on LinkedIn.

Source: PN Medical

EMR AND UNDERSTANDING WHEN YOUR CLAIMS DATA IS SUBMITTED TO NCCI

A black and white photo of the outside of an art museum.

The deluge of Covid-19 lawsuits against employers once feared at the beginning of the pandemic has fortunately not materialized and NCCI’s rule change will exclude Covid-19 related claims from experience rating calculations. However, Covid-19 has had a drastic impact on backing up the court systems and claims are staying open longer, becoming more expensive, and taking longer to get resolved.

This places an even greater importance on agencies to monitor open claims to mitigate their affect on an insured’s experience mod. The purpose of this blog is to review the timeline for when your claims data is submitted to NCCI and what we as agents can do prior to your data being submitted.

Losses included in the first reporting of a given policy must be valued as of 18 months after the month in which the policy became effective. Subsequent reporting of loss data (2nd–10th) must be valued 12 months after the valuation date of the preceding report. Each report level must be filed no later than two months after the respective valuation date. Please refer to the following chart for specifics.

 

 

For example, claims data from a policy effective 1/1/2020 will be submitted to NCCI somewhere between 7/1/2021 and 9/1/2020. Once your data is submitted to NCCI it is that data that will be used to calculate your experience mod for the coming year. It is extremely rare for NCCI to reevaluate and update progress on a claim after your data has been submitted.

For this reason, it is important to ensure the following prior to your data being submitted:

  1. All dubious claims are thoroughly investigated prior to data submission date.
  2. All open claims are reviewed with the claims adjustor to ensure the reserves are as minimal as necessary.
  3. For some claims, it might be necessary to include the attorney defending the claim and discuss the probability of prevailing. Even if the exposure for the claim is large, a high probability of prevailing over a fraudulent claim could justify a claims adjustor lowering the reserve of an open claim.

These are not fail safe strategies and going through these steps will not always result in reducing open claim reserves. It is always worth trying though because this data directly effects your experience mod and could result in higher premiums and potentially preclude insured’s from bidding on jobs if your in an industry that requires experience mods 1.0 or below.