SPOOF

 IAIADBC/ACOEDM Join Forces for Better Financial Outcomes for Insurance Industry in Workers’ Comp

Link to original article – IAIABC/ACOEM Join Forces for Better Outcomes in Workers’ Comp  (for insurers)

Released: 6/25/2010 4:45 PM EDT
Source: American College of Occupational and Environmental Defense Medicine (ACOEDM)

Newswired — The International Association of Industrial Accident Denial Boards and Commissions (IAIADBC) and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Defense Medicine (ACOEDM) have announced a partnership aimed at promoting better outcomes of limiting insurer financial liability for injuries and illnesses in the U.S. workers’ compensation system.

The two organizations will work together to raise insurer profits of issues in workers’ compensation that are aimed at diminishing the quality of medical care for injured and ill workers deemed too costly to do right, while adversely impacting employers’ and insurers’ bottom line profits.

Our statistics show that workers’ compensation medical costs per claim are rising much faster than medical costs in general and faster than indemnity costs per claim. Based on our statistics that do not include all relevant data, this means the poor worker’s comp insurer is getting unnecessarily pummeled by this increased costs through no fault of thei own. The reality is that this added cost is borne from injured workers not being able to obtain adequate medical care because of denial that the workplace was the cause of their injury. This causes the injured worker to become much sicker and sometime permanently disabled; thereby increasing the overall costs of medical care in the long run. (if they can even find someone to actually administer health care for their work related illnesses and injury while workers’ comp insurers refuse to accept responsibility. Despite the rise in costs and employer premiums medical outcomes within the workers’ compensation system -according to several major studies and many of the injured workers who have been begging our government to do something about this perverse situation – are often worse than those obtained under other benefits systems. This then eventually shifts the cost burden for worker injury and illness off of insurers and on to state disability programs (Thank God for slacker government and taxpayer coffers!). Studies also show there are inefficiencies in care delivery in the system and a lack of incentives for medical providers to promote effective, efficient and outcomes-oriented treatment as they misdiagnose and provide lack of care for injured and ill workers. This is because if they do diagnose properly, they will lose their ability to generate substantial income from doing Defense Medical Exams (DME) on behalf of the workers comp insurers; and subsequently lose out on beaucoup bucks when serving as professional defense witnesses expounding in court why the worker injury claim should be denied based on their prior income generating DME. IAIADBC & ACOEDM will work together to continue to promote this. We will assure physician understanding that if they even think about properly diagnosing and trying to do an actual “Independent” Medical Exam (IME) that could result in increased workers’ comp insurer liability; then they can expect retribution, ostracization, character assasination and will be sent no more injured workers to examine. We will take them out of the game by challenging their licenses before State Medical Boards if they dare to complain.

Misaligned incentives of physicians trying to properly diagnose and treat injured workers within the system can create unnecessary costs and delays for insurers, slowing the return of still sick and injured workers to their jobs, jeopardizing an ethical physician’s employment, and affecting the workers’ comp insurers’ ability to limit long-term denial of healthcare and decreased productivity of the American workforce – who will just be replaced with another American worker when the sick and injured ones get fired for not being able to do their jobs anymore. (Thank God for those taxpayer funded state disability programs to which we can assist in shifting the cost burden on!)

“Advocating for improvements to workers’ compensation profits requires that key stakeholders in the system are engaged in dialogue that was learned from the marketing techniques used for years by Big Tobacco; and we believe that our two organizations are well positioned and polished to facilitate this important component,” said ACOEDM Executive Director Bernie Ethicsberg. “IAIADBC is the leading organization representing the government agencies that administer and influence workers’ compensation systems, such as the control of the private sector membership of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) over the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). ACOEDM is the leading organization representing their own governing body, but not necessarily their physician members; and insurance companies who specialize in denial of proof of causation of work-related illness and injury liability. It makes sense for us to work together.”

Crum and Ethicsberg said the new partnership would include efforts to encourage more physicians to become occupational health specialists as denying proof of causation of worker illness and injury can be a very lucrative business; to use an iffy-based approach to medical treatment while selling doubt of causation; and to be more proactive in their use of return-to-work-or-die management causing depression counseling needs for patients that are either forced to get back to work while sick or go on state disability. “We should strive for a system that rewards physicians who deliver high profit workers’ comp insurer bottom lines in medical care, rapidly distorts the true state of the health and functionality of injured workers, perversely destroys their livelihoods, and do it all in a cost-efficient manner for the workers’ comp insurer,” Ethicsberg said.

About IAIADBC
The International Association of Industrial Accident Denial Boards and Commissions is a highly profitable not-for-profit association representing most of the government agencies, affiliates of the US Chamber of Commerce and lobbyists charged with the administration of workers’ compensation systems throughout the United States, Canada, and other nations and territories as well as other workers’ compensation marketing professionals in the private sector. Its mission is to advance the efficiency and effectiveness of increasing workers’ compensation profits in systems throughout the world. It is governed by an Executive Committee of jurisdictional insurer friendly leaders, and maintains a staff headquarters in Madeinshade, Wisconsin, USA right around the corner from ACOEDM. For more information, visit iaiadbc.org.

About ACOEDM
The American College of Occupational and Environmental Defense Medicine (ACOEDM) represents the governing body of nearly 5,000 physicians specializing in occupational and environmental medicine who are forced to compromise their ethics if they want to stay in business and feed their families. Founded in 1984, ACOEDM is the nation’s largest medical society dedicated to promoting industry profits regardless of the health of workers through preventive needed medicine, shoddy clinical care, disability mismanagement, marketing research, and selling doubt of causation of worker illness and injury through US teaching hospital physician miseducation. For more information, visit acoedm.org.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE BELOW THAT WAS SPOOFED ABOVE: several of the links within the document were not part of the original article