When an employee gets injured, it costs. It may be in finding other team members to cover a shift, hiring and retraining a new employee, or even a loss in production or a new project. And injuries can mean an increase to your workers’ compensation rates.

Your experience factor, calculated by L&I, can increase or decrease by 25% annually. 

We strive to work together with you and reduce your experience factor, so you pay less to L&I from the beginning. Your dedicated claims manager will work with you to provide the tools you need to reduce costs and get claims closed.

Through our third-party administrator (TPA), each participant is assigned a dedicated claims manager. Your claims manager will oversee all active claims for your location, reviewing all incoming incident and working with you to create a plan to resolve each claim.

Medical restrictions may prevent you from returning an injured worker immediately back to their regular job. However, it is possible to return to your injured worker to work in a different, light duty capacity until they are able to return to full capacity.

We will help you create a return-to-work program, identify opportunities to offer light duty work, and develop modified job descriptions to meet medical restrictions for each claim.

L&I also offers a financial incentive for reimbursement of a portion of the modified duty expenses. You may be eligible for reimbursement of a portion of base wages and expenses such as training and tools related to light duty work.

If light duty is not an option, another strategy Washington employers have to mitigate the cost of a claim is to continue paying an injured worker the full amount of wages and benefits while they are off work. Utilizing kept on salary can help you avoid an increase in your future workers’ comp premiums, while maintain or working towards a claim free discount.

Your claims manager will provide you with the cost benefit analysis of this option, so you understand the impact on your business.