Category: From Bob’s Cluttered Desk

Last week’s WCRI Annual Conference theme was “Disruption, Resilience, and Evolution,” and it did not disappoint. Held in Phoenix, Arizona, it offered comprehensive information about the current state of the workers’ compensation industry, along with insight into what we might expect in the future. The selection of Phoenix for this year’s event proved to be fortuitous regarding futuristic trends; more on that in a moment. The keynote speaker for the…

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Timely information makes for great education, and along that line of thought, the upcoming WCRI Annual Conference appears set to truly deliver. Scheduled for March 21 & 22, 2023 in Phoenix, the annual “research summit” (my words, not theirs) has crafted a truly relevant agenda for the times. The theme of the conference this year is “Disruption, Resilience, and Evolution.” In this post-pandemic era, it is a most suitable theme…

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Once again we delve into the rarified world of artificial intelligence, with another extended discussion with my friend Skippy, the OpenAI ChatGPT thingy that is challenging our conventional wisdom and scaring the crap out if us at the same time. In an earlier post, I mentioned that Skippy’s dataset is all based on information from 2021 and before, when he was initially trained to do his job. In this discussion,…

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Comedian Robin Williams once delivered what he called, “A Poem Written While on LSD.” It went roughly something like this: A Broo Arr Arr,A Broo Arr,Eve Arden,A Broo Broo Arr. Recently I have been playing with (chatting with, actually) OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine that will likely, at best, eventually upend traditional search engine functions. At worst, it may enslave humanity and destroy life as we know it. But…

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I have not written much in the last couple of weeks. It’s not that I don’t have much to say. In fact, I rarely “don’t have much to say.” It is just that the last few weeks have been extraordinarily busy, and I just haven’t found the time to pound out any of those words on the keyboard.  At least in some semblance of order anyone could understand. I have…

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There were several possible titles for this post. One was, “Bidding Abbie a Fond Farewell.” Another option was “Abbie Hudgens and Her Enormous Feet” (I’ll explain that one in a minute). But in the end, simply “Abbie” ruled the day. Because most people active nationally in workers’ comp will immediately know who I am talking about. Abbie Hudgens, the Administrator of the Tennessee Bureau of Workers’ Compensation for the past…

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It seems that as the years come and go, each one, for the workers’ compensation industry, ends up being defined by one or two dominant topics. 2015, for example, might have been the year of medical marijuana. 2019 was the year of presumptions. It is no surprise that 2020 was the year of Covid. That topic carried over for 2021, in the form of presumptions for “front line workers” and…

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What is the most common outcome of a work injury? That is a question that psychologist Dr. Les Kertay likes to pose to audiences when he speaks about workers’ compensation. He did so earlier this week during a presentation before the National Association of Workers’ Compensation Judiciary (NAWCJ), which gathered for their educational track at the Orlando Workers’ Compensation Institute 76th Annual Conference. The answers he received included “depression,” “litigation,” and…

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At the NWCDN Annual Conference in Nashville last week, a presenter shared a personal story about how their emotions once got the best of them when handling a particular claim. The speaker, whom I will not identify here, told the attendees about a claim that landed on their desk early in their career. In the course of the investigation, they learned the injured worker was, in their words, “A really bad man.”…

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Workers’ Compensation, as an industry, has a marketing problem. It is probably better described as a messaging problem. It has long been true that the industry has been broadly defined by the negative stories that find their way into local and national press publications and media outlets. We have been generally ineffective at countering that public perception, even though the vast majority of workers’ compensation claims go through the system…

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