The 2026 Southern Association of Workers' Compensation Administrators (SAWCA) Annual Convention recently took place, and access to care emerged as the dominant theme.
Regulators, providers, insurers, TPAs, and industry stakeholders highlighted growing workforce shortages among physicians, nurses, behavioral health providers, and medical specialists as an ongoing threat to timely treatment and injured worker recovery.
Multiple panels of experts spoke about the impact of declining provider participation in workers' compensation, shrinking networks, and solutions to remedy these challenges, including expanding access through urgent care centers, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, telehealth, and other technology-enabled care models.
Several speakers noted that workers' comp often provides a more direct pathway to care than traditional group health coverage because of medical case management and patient engagement, and an emphasis on timely treatment and return-to-work outcomes. However, specialty care access, particularly behavioral health services, remains a challenge across all healthcare systems, and in workers' compensation specifically.
Artificial intelligence was another recurring topic. While stakeholders acknowledge and embrace AI's potential to improve operational efficiency, regulators and payers spoke of their concerns with the increasing numbers of self-represented workers filing legal pleadings using AI chat in place of attorney representation. The conversation also focused on fraud detection, document review, and data analysis, with discussions focused heavily on governance, privacy, cybersecurity, data ownership, vendor oversight, and the need for human validation of AI-generated outputs.
These themes reinforce Healthesystems' role within the workers' comp ecosystem: helping payers navigate a complex regulatory environment, supporting access to clinically appropriate care through provider and pharmacy solutions, leveraging technology responsibly, and advancing data-driven decision making while maintaining appropriate governance and oversight.
