Editor's Note: Each year, National Underwriter's Excellence in Workers' Compensation Risk Management Award honors organizations with outstanding loss control, safety and return-to-work programs. This year's winners, American Infrastructure Inc.; Aramark Corp.; and Miami-Dade County Public Schools will be honored on Aug. 19 during the 68th annual Workers' Compensation Educational Conference (WCEC), set for Aug. 18-21 at the Orlando World Center Marriott.

The award is sponsored by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI).

During the conference on Aug. 19, NU Executive Managing Editor Shawn Moynihan will lead a roundtable from 1-3 p.m. featuring the risk managers representing all three winners, during which they will share the secrets of their award-winning programs.

Presented by the Workers' Compensation Institute, the WCEC is the largest gathering of its kind in the nation and offers discipline-specific programs and break-out sessions from hundreds of national speakers, as well as CEU opportunities. For more information on attending, click here.

Every business depends on its employees, but none more so than companies in the service sector. With more than 250,000 staff members worldwide, ARAMARK Corp. has built its business on providing professional services, including facilities management, food preparation, and uniform and career apparel.

However, by the early 2000s, ARAMARK was dealing with a Workers' Comp incident rate of nearly 12, taking employees off the job and affecting the service they could provide. The company was also contending with other costs associated with claims-management problems.

“Historically, our safety and claims functions were decentralized. As a result, there was little understanding of the risk drivers and no common strategy for loss prevention or claims management,” says Senior Vice President, Global Risk Management Debbie Rodgers.

“It wasn't unusual for us to face penalties because our TPA couldn't get information from us to handle claims in a timely manner. We also had claims that should have been medical-only become lost-time incidents because we weren't handling them promptly,” adds Carla Wynn, Associate Vice President, Strategic Claims Management.

Following a corporate-wide initiative to address the issue in 2004, a senior-level task force asked ARAMARK's risk management function to become the center of excellence for risk control and claims management. “It wasn't just that our incident rate was extremely high, it was the realization that each of those incidents represented an injured co-worker,” says Wynn. “We committed to making sure that first and foremost our employees were safe.”

Nine years later, the company has undergone a cultural transformation that has improved worker safety, halved the incident rate, and slashed claims costs. ARAMARK's initiative combined a new safety focus, involving both employees and partners, and new claims processes, including both workflow and technology.

Single Point of Focus

As it began its companywide initiative, ARAMARK recognized that visibility into Workers' Comp claims was impeded by a historically decentralized process, where claims management duties were often add-ons to the responsibilities of safety professionals and department supervisors.

The company created an Internal Workers' Compensation Team (ICT) located in three offices—ARAMARK's Philadelphia headquarters, Downers Grove, Ill., and Burbank, Calif. The ICT's role spans the spectrum of claim management: from oversight of individual claims and working with ARAMARK's managed care provider and TPA to providing education and information on Workers' Comp to employees.

“Previously, our TPA had to obtain information on claims from a hodgepodge of sources across the company. That made it difficult for them to obtain wage information, employment information, even simple information like phone numbers. It was also challenging to keep track of different state regulations and where our network providers were in various locations,” says Wynn.

Today, the ICT provides a single, common point of contact for ARAMARK's employees, management and TPA on claims. “The ICT is a facilitator to the entire program,” Wynn says. “It's not just having a second set of eyes on the claim; it's having the ability to provide the right information at the right time to the right people to achieve better claim outcomes.”

ARAMARK also created a new Decision Support & Analytics Team (DSA), armed with a new, internally developed Decision Metrics & Monitoring System (DMM), to analyze the impact of investments on claim results and shape future investment in loss prevention. And, the company also focused on strengthening relationships with business partners—insurance brokers, carriers, and TPAs—both to improve service delivery from those partners and to generate additional ideas for loss control.

“The DSA team has had a profound impact on our strategy by focusing our resources,” says Rodgers. “By using analytics to identify emerging trends, we are able to address issues early and develop risk control solutions to mitigate those risks. Our continually evolving predictive analytics also helps us to prevent workplace injuries.”

New Processes, Technology

ARAMARK targeted three areas of processes and workflow to improve WC results and return injured workers to health and get them back on the job. First, the company utilized predictive modeling, based on analytics from the DMM, to identify injuries that warranted nurse involvement from the outset. Those claims are transmitted immediately to ARAMARK's managed care provider. “This process ensures that managed care services are provided quickly and at the outset, but only to those claims requiring such services,” Wynn says.

Second, each new claim is now triaged by the ICT to ensure that everything is done right from the first notice of lost to claim closure, consistently and according to ARAMARK's preferences and practices. That includes identifying return-to-work opportunities and subrogation potential.

Lastly, ARAMARK has focused on increasing the utilization of care providers in its preferred provider networks. Recognizing that every one percent increase in network usage equates to $250,000 in medical program savings, ARAMARK has charged ICT with the responsibility of directing workers to network providers in states where such direction is allowed.

Supporting these process changes is technology, including the new DMM as well as the company's existing claims management and risk management platforms. Because accurate, timely data is essential for effective analysis, ARAMARK has established near-real-time data exchanges with its TPA and managed care provider.

“That [data exchange] has helped tremendously because we can see adjuster notes and share other information with the TPA. Having that data flow has been valuable in managing claims, helping supervisors manage their departments, and answering employees' questions,” Wynn says.

“Centralized risk control and claims functions as well as our strong analytics capability have given us strong credibility both with our internal stakeholders as well as external stakeholders, including underwriters,” Rodgers adds.

Fixing Slips, Trips, and Falls

One area in which ARAMARK's predictive analytics has paid dividends is in a slip-and-fall reduction program.

When the company created its new Decision Metrics & Monitoring System, it included detailed data-capture fields for cause of loss. Indicating that a claim occurred from a slip, trip, or fall prompts an additional question on how the fall occurred and whether the cause was normal condition.

“We were able to identify that one-third of our slips, trips, and falls were due to water being on a kitchen floor,” says Carla Wynn, Associate Vice President, Strategic Claims Management. “Given the nature of their work, particularly with steam tables, our food service employees felt that water on the floor was a normal condition, which it should not be.”

Therefore, ARAMARK's safety team created a special e-learning module designed to address this hazard.

“We trained people to recognize that water on the floor was not normal and to clean it up when they found it. Our slips, trips, and falls came down as a result,” Wynn says. Between 2008 and 2012, incidents declined over 35%.

'No One Gets Hurt'

Since its increased safety efforts began in 2004, ARAMARK has cut its incident rate nearly in half. Over the past three years alone, indemnity claims are down 13 percent, and the average incurred loss has dropped 4 percent. The company also recoups nearly $1.5 million in managed care savings annually.

The hard-dollar impact of reduced frequency and severity on ARAMARK's Workers' Comp premium is a savings of $200 million over the last seven years. But perhaps most important, the number of employees out of work due to injury has dropped over 30% during the last three years alone, an achievement that affects everyone who depends on the company and the service it provides. The injury reduction also reflects the goal of ARAMARK's SAFE (Safety Assurance in Food & Environments) program: “No One Gets Hurt.”

“Today, our incident rate and loss costs are going down even though our payroll is going up. We're able to reinvest savings from improved safety and loss control back in our business, which benefits our staff and customers,” Wynn says.

“I am extremely proud of the accomplishments of the Global Risk Management team,” Rodgers adds. “Through the development of strong partnerships internally and externally, analytics that direct our activities, and tools, training and improved processes, more ARAMARK employees return home safely from their jobs each day.”

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