From Bob's Cluttered Desk

I read a story last week about an Ohio police officer – make that a former Ohio police officer, who plead guilty to fabricating a story about being shot in the line of duty. The charges he plead to were one count of inducing panic, one count of making false alarms, two counts of tampering with evidence, one…

We recently concluded the second of our new CompNewsNetwork Pulse Polls, querying our industry on their views of the rights of undocumented workers’ who are injured on the job. This unscientific survey provided some interesting insight on how respondents feel about the issue. As this site reported Friday, when asked, “Should injured workers’ who are…

Today marks the beginning of the Third Annual Kids’ Chance Awareness Week, where the workers’ comp industry rolls out all the stops to make sure everyone and their brother has 1) heard of Kids’ Chance, and 2) understands what a terrific cause this organization supports. In case you have not yet been availed of this…

One of the challenges we have in workers’ compensation is that we are, in many jurisdictions, held hostage by a medical system that we can neither avoid or control. We are merely customers subject to the whims and quality of those who are serving the workers for whose injuries we are responsible. With medical spend…

A report issued this month claims that, as of last year, eight out of 12 Canadian workers’ compensation boards are overfunded by a total of $6.8 billion. In Canada, all boards are monopolistic, completely managing the workers’ compensation process for their provinces, from underwriting to claims administration. The group issuing the report, the Canadian Federation…

I started this blog, From Bob’s Cluttered Desk, in August of 2011. I can’t say I had a grand vision on where I wanted to go with it, or if it would be something I would even stick with. I literally decided in a single day that I wanted an area in which to occasionally…

Today at the 6th Annual Comp Laude® Conference, one of the sessions was a discussion with bestselling author, Dr. Robert Pearl. Pearl is the author of the book “Mistreated – Why We Think We Are Getting Good Healthcare and Why We’re Usually Wrong”. He covered many interesting points regarding the realities of medicine in our…

Far be it for me to be disagreeable, however, as so often is the case, disagree I must. I attended the annual conference for the National Workers’ Compensation Defense Network a week ago in Atlanta. One of the sessions, designed to talk about the transition from claim management to litigation, accidentally meandered on to the…

Earlier this week I wrote about a somewhat negative experience I encountered that involved the health care arena. Today I am very pleased to be able to counter that story with a very positive tale, indeed. I recently had an elderly relative who was hospitalized over several days for what turned out to be a relatively…

This afternoon I am scheduled for my annual physical. I don’t really know how it happened. I normally only have my annual physical once every 5 to 10 years, yet my last one was just, well, one year ago. My doctor somehow tricked me into scheduling this four years early. I am going to have…