Over 17 years, Larimer County’s Risk Manager Jeff Green transformed a bare-bones, deficit-ridden worker’ compensation program into one of the most consistent and cost-effective in the public sector — by making transparency, partnership, and getting people back to work the cornerstones of everything.

When two of the country’s largest health systems merged to form Advocate Health, the challenge of unifying their workers’ compensation programs fell to Melinda Daniel — who built a single enterprise program for 150,000 teammates across six states, guided by one simple principle: teammates taking care of teammates.

After 23 years in safety, Lee Pyfrom found the most effective program of his career at a safety conference — and it cost about $40 per person.

Panda Restaurant Group tackled a workers’ compensation crisis hiding in plain sight — building an in-house investigative team that cracked down on fraud and abuse while simultaneously making it easier than ever for genuinely injured employees to return to work.

By asking “why” one more time than most organizations are willing to, Professional Contract Services built a nurse triage program that dramatically reduced lost time and claim volume — while proving that caring for employees as whole human beings is the smartest risk management strategy of all.

By treating every injured employee like a family member — and finding vendor partners willing to do the same — Rumpke Waste & Recycling built a workers’ compensation program with sustained cost reductions and a 98% return-to-work rate that reflects something deeper than good claims management.

By building a disciplined, multi-layered opioid management program from the ground up, Nevada’s Risk Management Division has dramatically reduced opioid prescribing across its Workers’ Compensation plan of more than 900 open claims, protecting workers from addiction while cutting costs and improving recovery outcomes.

By unifying its approach to risk across workers’ compensation, auto liability, and general liability — and backing it with predictive analytics, behavioral safety training, and aggressive early intervention — Verizon achieved tens of millions of dollars in savings while building a stronger culture of care for its workforce.

By consolidating legacy systems into a single, integrated national model, Walmart Claim Services delivered enterprise-level consistency and meaningful improvements in the experience of injured associates, provider payments, and pharmacy oversight across one of the largest workers’ compensation programs in the country.

By rebuilding trust from the firehouse up — through transparency, creative accommodations, and an ad hoc committee that put all the right people in the same room — Metro Fire’s HR team transformed a strained workers’ compensation program into one of the most proactive and collaborative in the fire service.

By building a seamless system that puts the right information in front of injured employees the moment they need it — and backs it up with a rigorously tested ergonomics program — State Farm’s workers’ compensation team has made early intervention a reality, not just a goal.

In a profession defined by caring for others, Benchmark Senior Living has built a workers’ compensation and safety program that turns that same ethic inward — treating injured associates with the same commitment to human connection that defines care for its residents.

By asking a simple but powerful question — why should an injured employee receive better benefits on short-term disability than on workers’ compensation? — Fox Corporation built a salary continuation program that transformed its workers’ comp experience and gave injured employees something rare: the freedom to focus entirely on getting well.

By deploying dedicated telephonic case managers, systematically using injury video evidence, and tackling Medicare exposure head-on, First Student transformed the workers’ compensation program supporting the largest school bus fleet in North America — and proved that doing right by injured employees and achieving strong financial outcomes are not competing goals.

Older construction workers report lower rates of diabetes and high cholesterol than the overall workforce, according to CPWR-The Center for Construction Research and Training.

This is the fourth in a series of articles exposing what is driving the excessive recovery times and the high cost of workplace injuries. Litigation is a difficult subject in every possible setting. By definition, litigation carries with it conflict; the process of resolving rights-based disputes through the court system. The “grand bargain” was struck… View Article

Medical service costs per claim in California’s workers’ compensation system climbed 5% in 2025, driven largely by rising prices and growing utilization of services outside fee schedule caps, according to WCIRB.

Speed to care and triage still separate high-performing claims programs even as AI adoption accelerates, according to CorVel.

New CorVel President and CEO Sarah Scott discusses how clinically integrated claims, AI-enabled decision support and early intervention are reshaping workers’ compensation outcomes.

This is the third in a series of articles exposing what is driving the excessive recovery times and the high cost of workplace injuries. If you knew with certainty that any injured worker who does not return to work within 90 days will likely never return to work – would it change the way you… View Article