A variety of steps aimed at cutting delays in New York's disputed workers' compensation injury cases, which now average four months to conclude, will be proposed by the end of the month, according to an official.
The June 1 date was contained in a letter written last week by Insurance Superintendent Eric R. Dinallo to Gov. Eliot Spitzer updating him on the drafting of an implementation framework for New York's recently revised workers' compensation law.
Included in that effort is a huge data collection and research effort to learn return-to-work rates of injured employees, eliminate employer fraud, find the best ways to get workers back on the job, design medical guidelines for treating and rating injuries and find insurer loss costs for rate setting.
Last year, Mr. Dinallo reported, one sixth, or 25,000, of all comp injury claims were disputed by employers with employees winning in 41 percent of the cases, which averaged 240 days to process.
While claims were in dispute, workers received no lost-time indemnity benefits and only limited medical benefits were paid during disputes.
Mr. Dinallo wrote that to understand the disputed case delays, his department has interviewed claimants and employers lawyers, judges, and members of the MIS/Research unit at the Workers' Compensation Board and audited hearings.
Based on its findings, he said, the department is considering procedures to minimize the number of hearings on cases involving undisputed factual issues and to identify cases that can be decided quickly without hearing live testimony.
Also being looked at are regulations to require completion of the discovery process before the scheduled hearing date and to forbid repeated adjournment of hearing dates due to the unavailability of witnesses. How to speed up complex cases is also being examined
Mr. Dinallo said the State Labor Department is consulting with researchers, employers, labor organizations, injured employees and other states' workers' compensation systems to identify incentives and alternatives that should be included in the streamlined docket to encourage an injured employee's return to work.
Proposals to reduce case adjudication delays will be sent to the Workers' Compensation Board chairman June 1, and guidelines for medical treatment will be produced by Dec. 1 with rate data on insurers available by March 1, 2008, the letters said.
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