From Disability Management to Disability Solutions
Jason Parker, founder and CEO of Centrix Work Disability Solutions, sat down with ReEmployAbility’s National Sales Manager, Todd Loomis, on a ReAudio episode. Throughout the conversation, they discuss the importance of creating a worker-centered focus in the workers’ compensation industry and the challenges that come from changing the traditional framework in the field. Above all, Parker emphasized the need to prioritize the concerns and to make them the center of the return-to-work process. Through empowering workers with the “MAP” system (Motivation Action Planning), he can engage workers to make their own decisions for their return to work and recovery. This human-centered approach not only benefits injured workers but also supports financial insurance incentives by reducing claim durations and improving recovery outcomes. To create this change, there needs to be a large cultural shift in the industry where claims are focused on individual decision-making and autonomy in their recovery.
You can listen to the entire podcast episode here.
Centering Workers in the Worker’s Compensation Industry
Parker highlights the necessity of centering worker’s needs as paramount in his work with Disability solutions. Through his research he learned more about how debilitating not only medical disability is but also how “work disability” as a concept often gets overlooked. By bridging this gap, claims can be assessed more wholistically and create better outcomes for injured workers. Parker reiterates the fact that they wanted to prevent “people from being out of work unnecessarily,” allowing them to gain independence and confidence. Parker wishes to find solutions for disability, including a renewed focus on solutions for “work disability”.
Return-to-Work as a Worker-Focused Solution
In re-emphasizing this point, he tells a story of a baseball player with a rotary cuff injury and how through the process of healing, the baseball player doesn’t just sit out on the sidelines; they are able to help the team and slowly start playing as it is fit. Due to his method of sports rehabilitation, the injured baseball player is “never really out of work.” Ultimately, Parker believes that by centering injured workers, medical and insurance professionals are giving these individuals the autonomy to decide and be participants in their own recovery. In supporting injured workers, professionals can “help facilitate and create environments that support” the decision to return to work.
On Parker’s LinkedIn, his profile reads that he “helps insurers and employers improve return-to-work outcomes by transforming the inured worker experience,” reemphasizing the Centrix Work Disability Solution’s focus on creating an environment where, through their own informed choices, injured workers can make the choice to continue working and progressing through an injury.
Challenges In Worker’s Compensation Claims
Todd confronted Parker on this by asking: “What would you say are the top one or two hurdles that you see brought up by employers and carriers that prevent an injured worker from making that decision?”
Parker elaborates on the point by stating that one of the largest hurdles to centering injured workers on a claim is the Insurance system, stating that “it’s an impairment-based system” that “shuttle people through.” He elaborates on a case where a mother of two was dealing with a post-concussive syndrome, and instead of working with the individual to find what would be best for them, they are pushed through the different layers in the system.
Parker elaborates that the challenge in the system is that it “does a really good job of shoveling people through to all those stages without actually thinking about the worker and the consequences to that worker.” Parker believes that the insurance industry is “system-centered” rather than “people-centered,” and changing that mindset will allow the industry to become more humane. In a “worker-centric approach,” adjusters and other insurance professionals need to take a break and analyze what would be best for the worker instead of solely focusing on what is needed for the next step in the process. This comes with a change in paradigm and is initiated through open communication with the injured worker throughout the process.
Parker believes that the “system-centered” industry has allowed injured workers to become demonized, making it easier for professionals to disregard their needs or see them with suspicion. By focusing on what is best for the worker, you can understand motivation and get them back to work and recover faster.
Introducing Motivation Action Planning
Parker discusses “MAP” or Motivation Action Planning, a process that highlights the needs of the individual as they are getting back to work. It “conceptualizes return-to-work as a complex human behavior change,” which allows the worker’s compensation industry to create effective change through behavioral science for injured workers. By this framework, Parker states that his caseload went from “50% mental health” related to “90% mental health”.
MAP focuses on influencing positive choices for injured workers by being deliberate in discussions related to return to work, working with expectations from the worker, understanding their motivations, and engaging them throughout the process. Parker has implemented “motivational interviewing” and “solution-focused counseling” to the worker’s compensation claim process, which allows him to use science-backed behavioral science to support and encourage injured individuals through the claims process. This process not only benefits the injured worker but also supports the work that insurance professionals are doing with their caseload. Parker concedes that a worker-centered approach in return-to-work is “starting to come up and emerge as the best practice” for injured workers.
The Necessity of Communication
Parker elaborates that for the MAP process to work effectively, adjusters need to take the time on the front end of a claim to discuss return-to-work options with injured individuals to begin the process. By taking the time to outline some key points within the recovery process, individuals are more accepting of returning to work and other tools that will allow them faster recovery. With just a “seven to twelve minute” conversation, adjusters and other professionals can set the strategy for a worker’s compensation claim and begin motivation planning and mapping.
This deliberate communication sets the stage further down the line to make the claims “worker-centered” rather than allowing the system to become transactional. Setting return-to-work programs as a part of the recovery process from the onset allows injured workers the ability to recover at a pace that is beneficial. Parker believes that when a physician “writes (s) a person out of work,” it is directly harmful to the recovery process, not only in their health but also as it relates to personal, social, mental, and economic harm. Doing what is best for the individual will nearly always result in better outcomes. The change comes from no longer treating individuals as boxes to be checked off but motivating and encouraging someone’s recovery, bolstering their self-esteem to return to their life pre-injury.
A Needed Cultural Shift in Worker’s Compensation
Parker elaborates on the need to bridge risk management with a human-centered approach to create a more holistic approach to the worker’s compensation industry. There is a clash where different factions within the field don’t believe it is possible, but this union is ultimately the next step in worker’s compensation. In addition to risk assessment related to cost and figures, Parker argues that risk managers need to add human-related risk to the claim as well. Questions such as “Will this limit someone’s economic potential?” or “Will this decision harm this person’s recovery? Their mental health” need to be taken into account as well when formulating strategies for a claim.
The worker’s compensation field needs a mindset shift that will allow injured workers autonomy in their own decisions, including motivating them to return to work and recover more readily. Return to work is possible because it bolsters injured workers to recover their mental health and self-esteem to get back to their life before their injury. MAP and return-to-work create solutions for injured workers to take their fate into their own hands and allow them to make the choice to recover and proceed with their lives. By making it easier for the individual to return to work, we are supporting them in their recovery.
You can listen to the entire podcast episode here.
ReAudio: Reassess Your Workers Comp Toolbox Podcast is a ReEmployAbility podcast focused on the positive stories that come out of the workers’ compensation industry and on how to make positive changes within the industry. You can find the ReAudio Podcast on all major Podcast Platforms. Go here to subscribe. You don’t want to miss an episode!
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