From Bob's Cluttered Desk

I honestly did not know what to expect, yet I was somewhat shocked by the results. And it is making me rethink much about our current educational strategies. I’ve had the tremendous fortune over the last few years to present at numerous conferences and seminars about various areas of workers’ compensation. Many of those presentations…

Last week, during a presentation at the annual conference of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC), there was some spirited discussion between the panel and attendees. The session, “The Mind is Key”, was designed to help people understand and hear about effective psychological interventions, as well as how they are being…

As many of you know, from time to time I wander from the dusty realm of workers’ compensation topics in order to offer opinions and insight (what I believe to be insight, anyway) on important (at least important to me) topics of the day. This is one such moment. As a so called “road warrior”…

I am encouraged that, more and more, I am hearing the impact of bio psychosocial issues on workers’ compensation being discussed at conferences I attend around the nation. My visit to the 103rd Annual Convention of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC) was no exception to this trend. The conference was…

We had the inaugural episode of The Hot Seat Webinar this last Friday (replay available here). I am not going to say much about it other than it appears to have been a tremendous success. I believe David Langham will be writing about it in short order, and for now I will leave the details…

Today we launch our long-planned webinar series, “The Hot Seat”. It will be a new and unique venture for me, but I am very excited to get it off the ground. The Hot Seat will be a quarterly webinar presentation where we will have direct and open discussions on important issues facing our industry. My…

The clarion call went out in 2011. Ok, it wasn’t really a clarion call – it was just a simple blog post – so it was more like a softly whimpering acknowledgment. I wrote about a Mennonite family of four that had been overcome and killed by fumes from their farms manure pit in 2007.…

We’ve talked a great deal in recent years about the inherent ethical conflicts of physician dispensing; doctors writing and fulfilling their own prescriptions. I have defined arguments defending that practice as attempts “to scrub the indelible stain on the soul that prescribing for fun and profit undoubtedly brings.” The issue, of course, is that drugs…

Ok, it really isn’t a blooper reel, but it certainly may be a harbinger of things to come. We have been busy preparing for the inaugural episode of the “Hot Seat”, a webinar designed to provide valuable information for the workers’ compensation community in a lively and entertaining format. The Hot Seat will not use…

I have joked about it, but am really beginning to believe it. I think God vacations in Sarasota. We say that because for at least the last 100 years, despite occasionally insistent predictions of the meteorological community, our area has avoided any significant impact of a major hurricane. While we had some minor flooding and…