Paradigm is a different kind of company. More than just your average workers’ compensation case management company, Paradigm focuses on providing medical coordination and family support for people suffering from catastrophic injuries, and complex injuries.

Working in collaboration with families, medical providers, employers and insurers, Paradigm helps ensure the best patient care possible for catastrophic injuries and complex injuries. Here’s what makes them different.

Paradigm’s consulting doctors, nurses and specialists have extensive experience in catastrophic injuries, complex injuries, and traumatic brain injury management, and they work with both the patient and treating providers to ensure the best care for each person.

You can learn more about Paradigm’s model and success stories by visiting http://paradigmcorp.com/paradigm-overview/our-services.

The study, available online as of March 2012 in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, took place at the Brain Injury Research Center in Houston. Researchers adjusted their findings for age, education, gender, ethnicity and other potentially confounding factors.

Even with careful adjustments, they found a significant relationship between the emotional functioning of caregivers and greater social and occupational integration of traumatic brain injury patients. This relationship held as long as the individual with traumatic brain injury entered rehabilitative care within six months of the injury. TBI patients who entered rehabilitation programs more than six months after injury experienced no impact with regard to caregiver emotional function.

Researchers evaluated 136 patients with medically confirmed traumatic brain injury (57 percent of cases were classified as severe, 12 percent moderate, and 31 percent mild) along with their caregivers. Each patient was involved in one of three post-acute rehabilitation programs.

Participants were physically examined and questioned as part of the study. Those responses were integrated using accepted indices for measuring degree of disability and emotional/family functioning, including the Community Integration Questionnaire, the Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique (CHART), the Brief Symptom Inventory-Global Severity Index (BSI-GSI), and the Family Assessment Device-General Functioning Scale (FAD-GFS).

For those cases where the primary caregiver is a family member, employers and carriers may want to consider an integrated program that helps alleviate monetary and personal stress for the caregiver. This may help expedite the injured person’s return to work and minimize the long term workers’ compensation costs.

For information about how Paradigm successfully manages traumatic brain injury cases, contact us via our website or call 888-621-6602. We also invite you to join our social communities on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

According to a claimsjournal.com workers’ compensation article, the 2012 P&C Workers’ Compensation and Safety Survey found that 59 percent of employers are concerned about managing workers’ compensation costs in 2012. Managing workers’ compensation employee injury rates is, of course, one of the best ways to control these costs. Interestingly, recent research has identified a link between the rate of employee injury and an ineffective work/life balance.

Employee Injury and Work/Life Balance

Once upon a time, “we used to think work was one thing and family was another,” Dave DeJoy, a professor at the University of Georgia, told the Society for Human Resource Management. Now, there’s a “realization that work/life balance affects performance and productivity.”

DeJoy recently published a survey with Todd Smith, a recent graduate of the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health. The study, published in the February 2012 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Safety Research, is titled “Occupational Injury in America.”

Using the 2002 General Social Survey, which is a personal interview survey of households throughout the United States, the researchers found that injury risk increases by 37 percent for employees who are dealing with difficult family issues. According to the study, companies that run smoothly and effectively—and that only minimally constrain worker performance—experience 30 percent fewer injuries.

Workers’ Compensation Employee Injury Rates and Work/Life Balance

DeJoy’s study found that workers who reported the greatest amount of interference stemming from family issues tended to have the highest injury rate. Conversely, workers who reported the least interference had the lowest injury rates. In addition, employees who said they work in unsafe environments had substantially more injuries than those who reported safer work environments.

Together, these two measures of on-the-job climate are telling. Workers whose jobs interfered least with their family life and who worked in what they perceived as a safe environment with a positive culture of safety were least likely to be injured. When employees were unable to successfully balance work and home life, they were more likely to be injured—and most likely to be injured when they worked in what they perceived as an unsafe environment.

How You Can Improve Workers’ Compensation Employee Injury Rates

Building a safe on-the-job environment is still one of the best things any employer can do to protect the safety of employees. Once a safe work environment is established, continuously encourage employees to foster a culture of safety. Even workers who have problems at home had lower workers’ compensation injury rates than their counterparts who worked in perceived unsafe environments.

In addition, survey your employees to find out whether they feel their jobs interfere with their responsibilities at home, and work as a team to find ways to help employees improve their work/life balance. Employees who avoid major problems at home are statistically safer on the job, further lowering an employer’s workers’ compensation employee injury rates.

Paradigm is always ready to assist with your complex medical needs. For more information on our full service offerings, contact us via our website or call 888-621-6602. We also invite you to join our social communities on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

The use of best practices can result in fewer injuries for employees and more effective workers’ compensation cost control for employers. A few basic tools combined into a solid, three-pronged approach can help employers maximize workers’ compensation cost control.

When you focus on prevention through safety, quickly responding to injuries, and effective claims management, you’re emphasizing three areas that can help mitigate the costs of workers’ compensation claims. Here’s how:

• Prevent Accidents Through Safety: The best way to eliminate workers’ compensation costs is to prevent injuries from occurring. The time and resources involved in implementing a comprehensive safety program amounts to a mere fraction of the time and resources required to manage a serious injury. Safety minimizes exposure to indirect costs, too, including a drop in productivity, time spent training replacement employees, and low employee morale.
• Respond to Injuries Quickly: An organized accident response protocol can help your team determine where the injured worker should be treated, get the individual to the appropriate medical provider quickly and safely, and manage paperwork to minimize errors. A quick response time can mitigate the severity of an injury and decrease recovery time. Proper handling of the Work Ability Form can help the company respond to the employee’s needs upon returning to work.
• Manage the Claim Effectively: Hiring a dedicated workers’ compensation coordinator can help your business with effective workers’ compensation cost control. Upon the report of an accident, your workers’ compensation coordinator should immediately report the claim to management, ensure all appropriate accounts of the accident and other forms are filed and considered, and provide all relevant documentation to the claims office. Your coordinator should also contact the adjuster handling the claim to plan a course of action. A concerted effort to fully manage the claim can minimize the total cost to the employer and maximize the likelihood of a positive experience for the injured worker.

No matter how strong your safety plan, accidents can and do happen every day. Start by implementing a strong safety plan, but don’t stop there. Plan for responding to and managing workers’ compensation claims and you’ll maximize workers’ compensation cost control.

Paradigm is always ready to assist with your complex medical needs. For more information on our full service offerings, contact us via our website or call 888-621-6602. We also invite you to join our social communities on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Work-focused psychotherapy can help employees return to work sooner, according to the American Psychological Association (APA). Cognitive-behavioral therapy, specifically designed to help employees manage work-related problems, generally sped a healthy return to work with significant improvement in mental health over the course of a year according to the APA’s Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (2012 Vol. 17, No. 2  issue). The proper kind of cognitive-behavioral therapy may even help with catastrophic case management.

Multi-Tiered Benefits of Mental Health Therapy

Mental health therapy can increase the overall health and competence of your employees. Employees with depression or anxiety, who tend to take sick days in order to address or manage their problems, seem to respond particularly well to the type of cognitive-behavioral therapy introduced in the APA study. A focus on tools and techniques to help facilitate a return to work often isn’t part of traditional therapeutic practices, but work-focused cognitive behavioral techniques significantly improved worker outcomes in this study.

Indirectly, effective mental health therapy can also reduce an employer’s workers’ compensation costs, thus improving both the health of your employees and your business.

Here are the key points to consider:

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy is based on the idea that one’s thoughts, rather than external factors like people or events, determine emotion and thus behavior. Patients are usually taught particular tools or techniques to help them manage their emotion and behavior.
• Employees who received work-focused, cognitive-behavioral therapy and returned to work sooner did not suffer adverse effects. Rather, these patients showed significant improvement in standard mental health evaluations over the course of a year.
• Study groups that included work-focused techniques with typical cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment averaged a full return to work 65 days sooner than participants in a comparative standard therapy group – and they even started a partial return to work another 12 days earlier.

This study offers evidence that building a work-focused form of cognitive-behavioral therapy into your employee wellness program can help employees improve their health, wellness and productivity.

Through research and experience managing the care of hundreds of patients, Paradigm has built a complex care management approach that addresses the biological, psychological and social components of care. For more information on our methodology and services, please feel free to contact us online or call 800-942-1725. We also invite you to join our social communities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

In 2005, researchers at The Commonwealth Fund found the economic impact of U.S. labor time lost in relation to health concerns totaled $260 billion per year. In March 2012, Austin Frakt at The Incidental Economist noted the healthcare industry has been very slow to respond to U.S. healthcare needs. More and more companies are turning to internal corporate wellness programs to help turn the tide.

Health and wellness programs, combined with effective medical case management, can help your employees and your business thrive. Building and implementing an effective employee wellness program can:

• Increase your company’s average productivity.
• Decrease your insurance, workers’ compensation, and overhead costs.
• Decrease employee turnover.
• Improve company morale.

How to Implement a Successful Wellness Program

You don’t have to spend much to build an effective corporate wellness program. Here are the steps to success:

• Assess your needs and design a program. Each company is different, so take the time to brainstorm with the members of your organization. Determine what’s available, what you need most, and how best to implement specific strategies.
• Implement the program. Start by reaching out to partners such as your health insurance company who may offer health maintenance services like tobacco cessation. Adjust the little things – replace the candy dish, convert the vending machine in the lunch room to fruit, or organize team walks instead of coffee breaks.
• Get employee buy in. Make sure your employees know what health maintenance services are covered by their insurance plan. Encourage healthy behaviors and discourage unhealthy behaviors – but walk the fine line between encouragement and meddling. Add in a few healthy incentives, like rewarding employees who quit smoking.
• Evaluate the program. Keep data on sick days, workers’ compensation claims, and insurance claims so you can see patterns and changes over time. The numbers will tell you whether and how your wellness program is working.
• Grow the program. Regularly survey employees to learn what needs to be improved and then make changes. Listening to feedback and adjusting over time will help you adapt to shifting conditions and build a program that works for your employees.

Paradigm is always ready to assist with your complex medical needs. For more information on our full service offerings, please feel free to contact us online or call 800-942-1725. We also invite you to join our social communities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

An Ongoing Epidemic

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey has shown obesity rates holding steady in the U.S. at around 35% over the last several years. Growth in obesity may have leveled off as people became more aware of the health concerns associated with obesity.

Nonetheless, at that new plateau, 1/3 of adults and nearly 17% of children are obese. Obesity has become a long-term health concern, with a new generation of children at risk for becoming obese adults and thus obese employees. Obesity workers’ compensation concerns have the potential to be a major drain on the health of individual employees and the health of your business for decades.

Obesity and Workers’ Compensation Claims

Several employers quoted in a Workforce.com article indicated that obesity is an issue that can add substantial costs to and lengthen the management of workers’ compensation claims. The publication’s “Obesity Problems Weigh on Workers’ Comp” article summarized some research on the problem:

• A 2007 Duke University survey found obese workers were twice as likely to file workers’ compensation claims as their non-obese colleagues; medical costs were seven times higher for obese workers; and they missed 13 times the number of work days due to injury compared to non-obese individuals.
• The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) released research in 2010 indicating medical treatments, costs and claim duration were typically greater for obese workers than their non-obese counterparts with the same types of injuries. NCCI also found that injuries were more likely to become permanent disabilities in obese workers.

Obesity and injury can create a vicious cycle. An obese individual who finds herself off the job can “decondition” over time, gaining more weight during time away from work and creating more long-term medical problems. Obese individuals are also more likely to suffer from co-morbid health problems like hypertension or diabetes, making it more difficult to attain long-term health.

The obesity problem will be a long-lived and costly concern in workers’ compensation. Part of the solution, according to the Workers Comp Insider  blog, is to encourage employee engagement with his/her own health and wellness plans. Safety compliance, general awareness and individual healthy behaviors can improve a person’s well-being and reduce healthcare costs for employers.

An Aging Workforce

28% of our population has now begun to pass the age of 65 and will be retiring soon. Unfortunately, after the 2008 crash, TIME Magazine reported that 35% of boomers are “totally unprepared” for retirement, and half are worried about whether their savings will be sufficient.

As a result, potentially more than half of the Baby Boomer generation is willing to work for as long as they are able. Business Insurance cites a survey from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, suggesting that deterioration caused by normal aging and potential disease can negatively affect employees’ responses (and abilities to endure) workplace risks and hazards.

Reducing injuries in an aging U.S. workforce will require attention and innovation at the corporate level. If businesses want to retain the years of expertise, leadership, and inventive thinking that made the Boomers so successful, they will need to build workplaces that are safe for elderly employees. Not only is it the ethical course of action, it’s also vital to a healthy bottom line. Substandard workplace safety can add up to low productivity, massive losses to liability and workers’ compensation claims, and place your valuable Boomer employees at risk.

What can companies do to avoid this risk?

Effective Strategies for Enhancing Workplace Safety

Reducing injuries in an aging U.S. workforce is vital to the future economic health of the nation’s employers. Business Insurance outlines three steps for implementing a workplace safety plan for aging employees:

1. Identify and Analyze. Assess current and potential impacts/losses within the company.

2. Evaluate and Implement. Consult with safety experts to evaluate the current situation and design measures to reduce current risks.

3. Monitor and Adjust. Researchers and employers can work together to manage and improve safety over time.

Whether you choose to work with safety consultants or to organize an internal task force, take the time to analyze the current situation and identify problems. Don’t just implement changes once and consider it done; that’s the equivalent of applying a bandage over a major wound that requires stitches.

Instead, routinely monitor and adjust your policies based on current conditions and responses to existing implemented changes. Only through adapting policies and procedures to existing situations over time can you protect your investment in your aging employees. Reducing injuries in an aging U.S. workforce will take time, energy and resources, but will measurably improve productivity in the long run.

At Paradigm, we pride ourselves on providing the best results for people with complex medical needs. For more information on our full service offerings, please feel free to contact us or call: 800-942-1725. We also invite you to join our social communities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

The CDC has proposed the following prevention strategies, based upon the data in their report:

• Insurance restrictions and prescription data should be combined to reduce “doctor shopping.”
• Limiting the reimbursement of claims to a designated doctor or pharmacy, so that the insurer can easily identify incorrect or extended use.
• More education for medical providers on how to properly treat complex chronic pain problems.
• Improved legislation and increased enforcement of existing laws against “pill mills.”
• Evidence-based guidelines to better educate prescribers, especially for those in emergency departments.

Risk & Insurance also states that the CDC’s report references the aggressive efforts Washington State took to reduce opioid abuse. Washington State released dosing guidelines and focused on improving practitioner access to pain management specialists.

Overall, the CDC argues that any policy must aim to minimize abuse and safeguard proper access to medication on a national level.

For the full article from Risk & Insurance, website. We also invite you to read our recent blog about “The Challenges of Narcotics Weaning in Chronic Pain Management.” For questions or to refer a claim for chronic pain case management, please contact us or join our social networks.

Since treatment for those with catastrophic and complex injuries requires deep expertise, and involves multiple facilities and providers over a period of years, these claims have an increased risk for complications. Systematic Care Management supplements the treating medical team with a welcome, coordinated safety net to help mitigate missed information, inconsistencies between provider practices, medical errors and general fragmentation.

Systematic Care Management includes:

• Physician led consultative team with onsite nurse case managers
• Comprehensive recovery planning
• Access to top providers and centers of excellence
• Administrative infrastructure designed specifically for complex cases
• Proprietary analytic models and 20 years of catastrophic and complex case data
• One-of-a-kind outcome guarantees

Our Approach and Results

We wrap a complete team of experts around the injured person, including a nurse case manager, medical director, account team, clinical team, and medical specialists. As a result, we achieve 5 times better medical outcomes, compared to industry benchmarks, as detailed in Figure A. This ultimately translates into substantial savings for our clients.

Figure A.

Our Services

Paradigm built the comprehensive, Systematic Care Management model specifically to address the needs of those with catastrophic and complex injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations, burns, wounds and chronic pain. We offer our workers’ compensation carrier and large employers clients a variety of services including:

• Outcome Plans for acute catastrophic injuries such as traumatic brain injuries, multiple traumas, spinal cord injuries, amputations and severe burns.
• Complex Large Loss Plans for legacy cases with persisting problems such as chronic wounds, recurring hospitalizations, recurrent infections or escalating medical needs.
• Pain Management for emerging or chronic pain conditions including fibromyalgia, failed back syndrome and approximately 30+ other pain diagnoses.
• Portfolio Medical Management for complex large losses and pain claims wherein we guarantee reserve reductions for the entire portfolio of claims

At Paradigm, we pride ourselves on providing the best results for people with complex medical needs. For more information on our full service offerings, please feel free to contact us or call: 800-942-1725. We also invite you to join our social communities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.