Claims Administration - City of Santa Monica
Santa Monica, a coastal city in the County of Los Angeles, boasts sunny weather and a popular beach destination. While thousands of people travel to enjoy the sand and surf, Tom Phillips. the City's risk manager, and Patrick Fuleihan, the workers' compensation administrator, look at the city from a risk management perspective.
"Our overall goal is to reduce our total cost of risk in order to maximize city tax dollars," said Phillips. Using iVOS, the city was able to bring claims in-house and integrate bill review operations. These initiatives helped to reduce costs, improve services, and optimize operations. The city also utilized a Six Sigma model to apply consistent policies and procedures, which ensure quality claims handling.
Santa Monica invigorates its workers’ compensation program
With iVOS Bill Review, the city reduced administrative demands on its examiners. In addition, we've been very happy with the savings. Within three years. we saved $7.2 million in recommended amounts according to tee schedules." said Phillips.
The city is also able to leverage the power of its data, using iVOS
claims administration system to create and tailor reports to analyze data in a variety of ways. As a result, city management has identified problem areas.
"In workers' compensation, we identified departments that were injury-prone,' said Fuleihan. "With root-cause analysis, we targeted key priorities for loss control, which included reducing accidents with safety initiatives, decreasing the frequency and severity of claims, and improving return-to-work results."
In six years, the city's risk management team achieved outstanding results in its workers' compensation program, reducing claims costs by 35%.
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