Timely & Accurate Reporting of Workers’ Compensation Incidents

Timely reporting of employee injuries is very important. Many states have reporting laws and, if claims are reported late or inaccurately, you may incur a fee. Additionally, due to regulatory compliance, it is important that your organization is using the correct forms and providing complete and proper documentation. Reporting incidents in a timely and accurate manor also ensures that changes can be made to the worksite in order to prevent additional injuries and keep employees safe.

Timely Reporting
Because the requirements that each state places on employers can vary considerably, we’ve prepared a Dropbox folder that includes documentation and guides specific to your state. It’s very important that you review your specific state’s Workers’ Compensation Claim Kit in order to make sure you are reporting within the correct timeframe and using the correct forms.

Included in the Claim Kits are the Employer’s First Report of Injury for your state. You can also find these on our online C&F connect portal. When an incident occurs, please submit these forms online or send them via email to crumandforsternol@cfins.com so that we can perform all state filings upon claim set up.

Our Workers’ Compensation claims data also shows that the longer an organization waits to report a claim, the higher the cost of that claim. That’s because a delay in reporting may holdup medical treatment to the employee, possibly aggravating the injury and extending the pain or discomfort.

Accurate Reporting
Another trend that we see in our Workers’ Compensation claims is that, when reports are vague or inaccurate, this can cause an incident report to be kicked back from the Department of Labor. When this happens, organizations risk being fined as they were not filed within the appropriate timeframe.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you include the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ of every single incident. This will allow the claims adjuster to get a full picture of what happened. Additionally, consider the following:

• Have the employee provide the description of injury to you so that you can get the best possible information
• Include whether or not the employee sought medical care
• Fill every box on the incident report, or include N/A
• Check that the date of birth, social security number and spelling of the name are correct

A complete incident report does not necessarily need to be long. Below are examples of both incomplete and complete incident reports. These are based on real world examples we have received:

Incomplete: Employee fell in the gym

Complete: On Tuesday at 2pm, Susie was in the gym and tripped over a set of free weights. This caused her to fall on her left ankle. Jim took Susie to urgent care and there is a follow-up visit on Friday.

As you can see in these examples, the exact details of the incident as well as specifics about what body part was involved allows for a better picture of what happened.

To ensure that all employees get the care they need and ensure that the work environment is safe for all, please report all claims in a timely and accurate manner.