WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
COVID-19 AND WORKERS’ COMPENSATION IN WISCONSIN By this time many of us have attended national webinars, read national periodicals containing articles regarding Covid-19 and the exposure it may bring to the workers’ compensation industry.
Your Bureau’s transition was seamless. There was no change in service availability and work was processed on time despite the many Covid-19 related phone calls that added to our workload.
Logic 101 teaches us a basic flaw in logic is the hasty generalization. The problem with consuming national information and applying it to one state is obvious. In addition, early to market national predictions based on inadequate data often wastes time and miss the mark… by a lot.
As president of the organization, I am proud of the entire staff, the flexibility and extra hours worked to ensure availability, and timely decision-making for members, employers, agents and all other stakeholders. Our Rating Committee, Governing Board and all employees really did step up and I acknowledge all of them and their communal effort.
In some cases, particularly in specific states where laws are changed or enacted quickly , generalizations regarding the specific state are reasonable and necessary. Otherwise, unless each state is looked at with a critical eye and a gathering of state specific data, reports with a wide span are less useful if not misleading when applied to one state. Here’s Wisconsin specific information you can rely on.
Wisconsin Specific Workers Compensation Impact of Covid-19 Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureaus transition from office to home.
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JUNE 2020
wisconsin INDEPENDENT AGENT
Claims Received The WCRB does not collect real time data regarding claims. Still, we believe it is important to understand, at least anecdotally, what volume and types of Covid-19 claims are being presented by first responders, healthcare workers and other workers deemed essential. A hasty generalization made by using countrywide statistics could have led us in the wrong direction. With national reports predicting up to a 50% decrease in overall claims activity (because of the unemployment plunge) through April 2020, Wisconsin has seen a decrease of approximately 25% in new claims opened.
