For these top five issues, consensus was reached among all groups. Some differences did exist among the groups on other less highly rated concerns:

Carriers saw fewer problems with the quality of claim personnel than risk managers (3.1 compared to 4.6).
Smaller and mid-sized carriers had more concern about privacy laws than Tier 1 carriers (4.9 compared to 3.5).
Smaller and mid-sized carriers also had more concern that their systems did not measure what was important (6.1 compared to 4.5).

Later in the survey, respondents were asked to rate the approaches used to deal with the points of pain. The following indicates rank order and average score of respondents (on zero-to-10 scale) for the various approaches seen as needed in order to deal with the key issues and concerns:

Reduce frequency and severity of losses (8.66)
Improve reserve accuracy (8.66)
Improve customer satisfaction (8.56)
Reduce loss costs (8.43)
Improve return-to-work results (8.4)
Monitor accuracy of medical provider payments (8.24)
Improve timeliness of incident reporting (8.19)
Improve accuracy of claim information (8.08)
Improve reporting of reserve changes (8.04)
Monitor timeliness of payments to medical providers (7.65)

Of particular interest was how technology was used to address these various issues. In the case of rising medical costs, several technology capabilities seemed to be employed. In the case of establishing reserve accuracies, technology seemed to be less utilized despite its perceived value.

Special Reports /

Prescriptions for Points of Pain in the Claims Process

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