Proper administration of a worker compensation benefits claim is important for businesses. The lack of proper administration can create legal complications for a business and impact its reputation. Below we are highlighting some fundamental steps that employers need to follow to administer a worker’s compensation claim.
1. Equipping the Team with Right Knowledge
Employers should educate supervisors and employees about workers’ compensation coverage and the requirements of injury/illness reporting. Typically, a company creates policies and procedures that are a part of the employee’s procedure manual and post on the companies website. Proper training should be provided to the supervisors on when and how to report work-associated injuries and illnesses. Filing a worker’s compensation claim can be quite complicated; to find out more you can do some searches on the internet.
2. Reporting the Incidents
Employees should be given proper training to report any work-related incidents to a designated representative, which is typically human resources, a manager, or members on the health and safety committee.
The representative determines the need for first aid and whether it can be performed on the scene itself or the injured needs to be taken to the hospital. Furthermore, immediate action needs to be taken to make sure that the place where the incident occurred is safe to prevent the cause of any future accidents.
3. Completing the Injury/ Illness Reports
If it is possible, then the representative should contact the injured in order to complete the illness/injury report. In some companies, the representative has to fill out their own report; others offer first report injury or workers’ compensation claim forms. In the report, there should be the following information:
· Injury date
· Place of injury
· Description of illness or injury
· Date when employers become aware of the incident
· Data on which employers received the report
· The date on which employers gave back the form to the employee
Depending on the scenario, there might be other information included in the report.
4. Filing the Injury/Illness Reports
In this step, the company needs to file the injury/illness report along with the insurance company. A representative should check with the carrier regarding the methods to submit the report.
While some offer electronic submission, others require companies to mail the report. In some states, the incident report is required to be submitted to the workers’ compensation agency of the state. So it is important to check with the insurance company beforehand.
5. Monitoring the Progress
After submitting the report, the company must maintain contact with the carrier to check up on the progress of the claim. After the report, the company might also need to submit medical reports of the injured employee to the compensation carrier, and there might be other documents that an organization needs to fill out. These documents are necessary to gain the vital information that will be critical in processing the claim.
These were some basic steps involved in the administration of workers’ compensation claim process. There are other steps involved in the process, but that depends on the condition in which the injury or illness occurred. Organized and systematic administration of these claims can save the time of both the employees and employers.
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