For the past three years, Healthesystems has surveyed professionals across the workers’ compensation spectrum to get a sense of their greatest perceived challenges. Normally, those professionals are recruited from the Risk & Insurance® booth at the National Workers’ Compensation and Disability Conference & Expo (NWCDC). This year, the survey was disseminated entirely online, for reasons we understand all too well.
This year, 602 industry respondents ranked the top 10 disruptors that have had the most significant impact on their organization in 2020, recognizing not just the significant impact of COVID-19, but also longer-term, systemic challenges within the industry that will continue to disrupt operations until solutions are developed or fine-tuned.
The top 10 disruptors of 2020 for the workers’ comp industry are:
- COVID-19
- Psychosocial Factors
- Mental/Behavioral Health
- Access to Care
- Telehealth
- Interoperability Between Disparate Systems
- Mobile Technology
- New and Expensive Medical Treatment
- Opioids
- Artificial Intelligence
The COVID-19 pandemic is a unifying theme across many of these disruptors, presenting new safety threats, roadblocks to the recovery of injured workers, and operational challenges for workers’ comp organizations.
But this enormous disruptor could yield some positive long-term changes. On the technology side, the pandemic has illuminated what works and what doesn’t in the context of remote work, and could drive the increased investment in technology that many organizations need in order to move past the disruptive phase of new tools, and start reaping their benefits.
Visit Risk & Insurance® for the full article and a more in-depth discussion of these disruptors, including the insights of Healthe leaders Robert Goldberg, MD, FACOEM, Chief Medical Officer, and Kristine Kennedy, SVP, Product Strategy and Innovation.
