When people hear that someone has joined an organization, they often focus on the individual. I tend to focus on what the addition says about the organization. Every hire is a signal, revealing where an organization believes the future is headed. That is why I am particularly excited to announce that Dr. Waqas Buttar has joined WorkCompCollege.com as our Medical Director. While this certainly is a story about Dr. Buttar,…
Voice of the Provider is a collaboration between Brooks Rehabilitation and WorkCompCollege.com and the name defines its purpose. Many stakeholders in work comp do not understand or appreciate all of the various clinical providers that help an injured employee return to and stay at work. Whether recovery from the injury / illness is easy or hard, there are clinicians along the way that utilize their education, expertise and experience to…
Introduction One of the most overlooked and underutilized tools in workers’ compensation is also one of the simplest: a clear, accurate physical job description of the work the worker was doing at the time of the injury. Early in my career, I encountered a case that perfectly illustrates why this matters. This true story has stayed with me because it demonstrates how easily a misunderstanding about a job can affect…
In every encounter in our practice within our Worker’s Compensation ecosystem, each interaction is modified by our personal experience. During my career pursuing cost-containment measures within Worker’s Compensation, two of the most dreaded words were “lumbar fusion.” The issues related to lumbar fusion often included persistent pain, long-term disability, and significant changes to the lifestyle of the affected employee. Personally, I have a long history of chronic low back pain,…
Voice of the Provider is a collaboration between Brooks Rehabilitation and WorkCompCollege.com and the name defines its purpose. Many stakeholders in work comp do not understand or appreciate all of the various clinical providers that help an injured employee return to and stay at work. Whether recovery from the injury / illness is easy or hard, there are clinicians along the way that utilize their education, expertise and experience to…
Recovering from a work-related injury involves far more than physical healing. For many injured workers, the experience creates an immediate disruption to the structure of daily life—removing the routines, responsibilities, and sense of contribution that once provided direction and stability. As that structure shifts, time away from work can become difficult to navigate. Days take on a different rhythm, social connection may change, and the role that once reinforced a worker’s identity is suddenly out of reach. Over time, recovery can begin to feel uncertain not only physically, but emotionally and…
Leadership Lessons We Didn’t Learn in Business School (Some of Us May Have Learned Them at the Bar) I didn’t set out to build a career in workers’ compensation. Like many people in this industry, I landed here almost by accident. I took a claims adjuster role at Aetna Property & Casualty because I wanted a stable, business‑focused job. At the time, workers’ compensation wasn’t the coveted path—property and casualty…
Best estimates are that work comp accounts for 1-2% of overall healthcare costs in the US. We are close to a rounding error when compared to private health insurance (28-31%), Medicare (20-23%), Medicaid (18-20%), private pay (10%), and other government programs (5%) like the Veterans Administration, Tricare, and Indian Health Service. Although we're small in the big picture, broader healthcare trends almost always find their way into work comp eventually.…
A year and a half ago, we published a fairytale about Doctor Google. Since then, a lot has happened in the Fairytale magical medical world of Workers’ Compensation. A common complaint from many treating physicians is that their patients had already visited "Doctor Google" and that "Doctor Confirmation Bias" had already confirmed the diagnosis. This has made it more difficult for the physician to make the correct diagnosis. The problem…
As a workers’ compensation professional, one of the ongoing challenges is assessing whether the recommended interventions are clinically appropriate, medically necessary, and will genuinely help the injured person return to work with maximum medical improvement. Certain decisions are entirely suitable for the requested treatment. A slip and fall in a 63-year-old individual resulting in a comminuted fracture of the femoral head clearly requires surgical intervention to include total hip replacement…
