Hope you had a wonderful holiday season. For the staff of MTMIC, it went by quickly. With over half of our policyholders renewing on January 1 it has been a busy office time.

File reviews, gathering data, reviewing losses, loss control reports and getting shop operation updates from our policyholders takes time. While it is still too early to give you the “numbers” for January 1, our early indication is that we have renewed about 98% of our policyholders. We will share the final numbers with you next month. A couple industry trends are apparent. Most of your shops are busier now than last year. Not everyone, the results are “lumpy”, yet in aggregate, payrolls look to be up about 8%. Another interesting finding is that many of our policyholders have added a new product line and/or new significant customer. I was surprised how much your shops have changed and adjusted to new products and/or customers. Our policyholders ARE creative and pushers. Not much of this helps you in workers compensation, but the market intelligence is interesting. Maybe one piece of MTMIC trivia. How much payroll do our policyholders anticipate in 2014? A big number – over $1,100,000,000.

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By Donna Motley, Director of Claims

A New Year – new opportunities, new challenges, a chance for all to improve! 

Please remember to promptly report all injuries. Failure to promptly report injuries results in delayed medical treatment and inconvenience for the injured worker. If an employee does not report an injury in a timely fashion, we suggest disciplinary action be invoked.

Authorization to treat, other than the initial visit, should only be given by our office. That would include authorization for continued treatment, testing or referral to a specialist. We can only extend authorization if we have the claim information in our office.

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By Travis Halsted, Loss Control Consultant

Many of you have asked questions as to how you can lower your number of back injuries. While there are many contributing factors to a back injury, there are aspects to investigate that could possibly point to a root cause. After a back injury is reported it is paramount to try to identify any common aspects, such as the task at hand, work areas, and even down to a particular item being produced, that could give details on how the injury occurred and what can be implemented to prevent it from happening again. With the act of lifting being such a common practice, we often tend to do it without thinking of the effects of improper lifting.

Improper lifting can result in a variety of different injuries. Of these injuries a back strain is a very common one that is a result of over-stretching certain muscles. Another injury from improper lifting is a hernia. A hernia is an injury that occurs from continued extreme exertion. With back injuries being involved in 24% of all occupational injuries and illnesses involving days away from work, it is easy to understand why so many companies are looking for fixes to the rising issue. (more…)