Ingredients for Implementing a Successful IDM Program
Here are the required ingredients to overcome the lack of decision support data, turf issues and bad attitudes:
- Organizational support at the highest level.
Senior management must support the transition to IDM, tying the program to other corporate initiatives covering overall employee health, wellness, and productivity.
- Creation of a single cross functional team to support the program.
A single unified team is necessary to avoid the silo mentality. The primary team should include claims groups for disability and workers compensation, safety and in-house medical. Assignment of a dedicated in-house legal resource for benefits and a dedicated communication resource for the implementation phase is helpful. A second team of selected plant human resources and management representatives is helpful in determining program design as well as providing additional bodies for benchmarking visits or vendor site visits.
- Common program objectives and claim management guidelines.
While there will be some differences in the processing of occupational and non-occupational claims, there should be a common claim reporting process and claim management guidelines. All employees should be contacted within a certain number of hours/days after reporting an accident whether work-related or not.
- Protocols for disability duration and medical management of various injury types should be the same for both occupational and non-occupational claims.
Existence of (or migration to) a strong Return to Work culture. The key focus of an IDM program is to return the injured employee to work and to productivity as early as possible. This requires both the business flexibility to support modified duty, job accommodations, or temporary light duty assignments (i.e. functional job descriptions, job variety, etc.) as well as the resources required to carry out these goals (in-house or external services for occupational rehabilitation, work hardening, and other services).
- Formal system and process in place for capture of relevant data.
With a unified claim reporting process, key claim data should be kept for both occupational and non-occupational claims. While some IDM vendors offer a single claims information system, others use a “bridge” program to generate a single report from separate claim databases.
- Strong communication program.
A well-planned communication program is critical to a successful implementation. The initial message and periodic updates should be sent to the affected employee population well in advance of program changes, and should highlight the (positive) reasons for the change. Key points of the message should focus on program goals of returning employees to productivity, wellness, and should address concerns that the integrated program would reduce benefits employees were entitled to under the prior structure. Separate communication meetings with plant management, HR and supervisory personnel should be arranged in advance of implementation.
Stages of IDM Program Implementation
- Program justification, consensus-building and concept design.
The first step involves articulating the reasons for a change to IDM, the expected benefits, organizational changes required and formulation of a process plan and timeline. If a broker or consultant is involved in the IDM vendor evaluation process, they can provide input from other clients on reasons, benefits, goals and process for transitioning to an IDM program. If estimating the current cost of non-occupational disabilities makes forecasting overall reductions in costs from transitioning to IDM difficult, the value of being able to accurately capture this data is a benefit in and of itself.
- Program design and vendor evaluation.
The second phase involves deciding program structure and administration, selection of potential vendors for interviews, site visits of claim centers, as well as interviews and possibly site visits of vendor references. Program structure elements include claim reporting, claim management, claims information systems and data input, medical management, and return to work programs. Decisions need to be made as to which of these functions will be performed internally, through vendors, or in some combination. Important issues to consider in evaluating vendors include geographic capabilities, structure of their common intake or “triage” center, capabilities and cross training of claim professionals, and reporting system capabilities.
- Program implementation.
Some companies can transition to IDM on a gradual basis, selecting certain plants or divisions on a pilot basis to work out the kinks before launching company-wide. The changes should be well communicated in advance of implementation and special training given to affected plant HR and supervisory staff. It is not unusual for reported claims to increase after implementation as the new reporting process is communicated to a larger audience.
- Program monitoring and evaluation.
Both the overall program performance (number of employee days out of work and related costs) and the satisfaction level with vendor services should be measured and evaluated on a regular basis. Feedback surveys either from the general population or selected sites / individuals (supervisors, plant HR, etc.) should be solicited on a regular basis particularly in the early stages.
