Injury triage can significantly reduce the costs associated with workers compensation, when dome correctly, and can also get injured employees back to work again while increasing overall workplace satisfaction for all employees. If you haven’t already implemented injury triage in your workers compensation program, now could be the time to do so:
Just how important is injury triage?
Having an effective response in place for when an employee becomes injured is incredibly important, here’s what you should do when an injury is reported and why:
- Comprehensive documentation of the incident and injury
Mitigating the cost of future programs is made possible by accurately documenting the work-based injury and can be used as part of a claim investigation.
- Effective post-injury medical care can be sought
If an injury is properly and thoroughly assessed, the employee can benefit from immediate and appropriate medical care.
- The injured employee becomes a priority in the workers compensation process
With a properly documented and assessed injured employee, you can significantly reduce the need for unnecessary litigation and any associated costs.
- Send a positive message to all employees
With an injury triage process in place, employees will see that you value them and care that they receive the right medical treatment to get them back to work as soon as possible.
As an employer, how can you implement an injury triage program?
Thanks to advances in technology, telephonic and web-based systems enable employers to subscribe to an injury triage program at affordable, flat rates, and can help save them money in the long term when it comes to insurance premiums. Injury triage is only ever as effective as its provider though, and they must use nurses, nurse practitioners or other advanced practice medical professionals with strong medical backgrounds, while following a consistent decision-making algorithm. The injured employee should also be able to speak to someone qualified via telemedicine if they are not required to be immediately transported to a hospital or medical center.
While getting medical care for your employees when they’re injured at work is extremely important, oftentimes, they do not require that care to be administered at a healthcare facility, and once properly assessed, can be tended to on site. Naturally, this reduces the cost of medical appointments and even more time lost from work, and is also much less stressful for everybody involved.
To conclude:
If you’re a small business owner and are suffering from the excessive costs of a worker’s compensation program, why not minimize those expenses by putting an injury triage system I place? This not only works in your favor, but ensures that your employees get the best and most appropriate medical care if they have the misfortune to incur an injury while at work. To know more about injury triage programs, talk to your existing insurance provider, today.