Workers compensation claims adjustments could become more of a science thanks to the new modeling tools that are going on the market. While modeling has been part of workers compensation for years, the newer versions of the tools are predicted to be much more accurate in selecting problems claims before workers compensation losses start going out of control.
Liberty Mutual Group, Inc has already released a new predictive model which utilizes updated data to figure out how conditions such as depression, employee dissatisfaction, and obesity issues could hurt the return to work of an injured employee. The model is met to identify claims that may begin small but which will likely grow into much larger losses.
Experts in the field believe that it is the slow-to-emerge claims which are the most challenging for workers compensation. The industry believes if those claims could be understood early on, there would be actions to take to prevent claims from spiraling out of control. Liberty Mutual is hoping the new tools will save the company about $100 million before the tools will be considered a success. That amount is roughly just 5% of the total amount of workers compensation claims the company pays annually to injured workers.
Other companies have been working on improvements to their existing tools in order to be more accurate. They are constantly researching the data that can help understand why some people take much longer to recover from work injuries than others. That information is then used to help injured workers recover and get back to work.
With the level of competition between insurance companies, it is predicted that the accuracy of these predictive tools will increase significantly in just the next few years.
