James Benham writes for WorkersCompensation.com:

The cost of manual do-overs [in workers' comp.] is tremendous, and two costs in particular sit downstream.

The first is duration. Studies of workers’ compensation systems, including longstanding work from the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute and a Monash University analysis of claim-processing times, consistently show that the longer the administrative phase of a claim takes, the longer the disability lasts and the worse the return-to-work outcome.

The second is litigation. Attorney involvement in workers’ comp is rarely a function of legal complexity alone. WCRI’s research on why injured workers retain attorneys points to perceived communication failures: workers feel ignored, confused about their care path, or unsure whether their claim has been accepted.  When systems do not connect, the people running those systems cannot connect with the worker on the other end of the file either.  They are too busy reconciling data.  A WCRI study of more than 950,000 lost-time claims found that represented claims cost roughly $7,700 to $12,400 more than comparable non-represented claims.

Read the full article here.  The WCRI research he cites includes Avoiding Litigation: What can employers, insurers, and state workers’ compensation agencies do? (2010) and the more recent Impact of Attorney Representation on Workers’ Compensation Payments.  Visit their pages on the website for more information, including details of how to get copies!