Certainly, you know that the Property Casualty (P-C) insurance is a
world away from Health Insurance and their managed behavioral care
partners, correct?
P-C insurers are folks like Lloyds
of London, AIG, and Hartford who worry about a fire burning the building
down where your EAP office is located. They also worry about things
like lawsuits for wrong termination, automobile and truck wrecks,
lawsuit payouts for sexual harassment, and workers' compensation payouts
when employees prove they have been cheated. Lawsuits for trips and
falls, employment practices liability, and theft of tools--yep, they
insure against these types of losses too--almost anything other than
employee behavioral health.
And workplace violence,
when it happens, someone getting shot, and families suing over their
grieved relatives...who pays? It's not United Healthcare. It's these big
boys with P-C.
Now stick with me on this post.While
managed behavioral health care wants one thing from an EAP--assessment
and avoidance of access to the employee's insurance afforded by the
behavioral health plan if possible, (thanks to an EAP's assessment and
short term counseling skills within the core technology), a property
casualty insurance company would want everything it could possibly wring
out of your EAP in order to target as many behavioral risk exposures as
possible in an effort to prevent insurable and compensable losses.
(Please read that again and consider the implications.)
Human
behavior in the workplace contributes to many liabilities and
exposures, and all of these risks are born by insurance premiums. They
also come with high deductibles--like $25-$50,000 for a lawsuit
associated with sexual harassment.
Back injury and lengthy periods of time out of work, the P-C pays. Sexual harassment by a supervisor? Yes, the P-C pays.
And
the $1 million out of court settlement instead of the risk of $5
million in a jury trial? Yes, again, the P-C forks over the cash.
Now
imagine a well integrated EAP able to educate supervisors, detect
emerging risks, and go anywhere within an organization necessary to
engage and discover, educate, and train, assess and consult, and all
with the purpose of reducing losses. How much might this sort of "human
factors exposures prevention" be worth?
My guess is a lot, because the stakes are enormous. This is could also be a renaissance for EAPs. Am I wrong?
It's
time to engage this tremendously financially liquid world of P-C. There
are thousands of brokers nationwide. They know nothing about EAPs
(other than the # on the back of their own insurance card in the event
of an alcohol or psychiatric issue.)
There is a potentially wide-open avenue for EAPs to grow and flourish in ways that have not been seen for quite awhile, I think.
Write me at publisher@workexcel.com
if you think I am off base about this. I wouldn't have written this
much except for one thing. In 1993, I went to one of the most
competitive EAP markets in the U.S. (Denver) and I engaged with a
property casualty insurance broker there. I trained insurance agents all
about EAPs in about three hours so they could offer these tools to
customers. A week later, I returned and picked up three checks from
three different companies averaging 100 employees each who had never had
a comprehensive EAP. No lie.
I then flew to Baltimore,
MD to the corporate headquarters of NSF&G Insurance, and within
their boardroom made a presentation to talk them into beginning an EAP
division and hiring real core tech pros. They listened, but their staff
turned over, and I was full time employed at Arlington Hospital, and
couldn't do it all myself at the time.. But this opportunity still
lingers.
Mark Attridge's (hats off to him) awesome
article in the Jan 2017 Journal of Employee Assistance discusses the
obvious difference between a free EAP and a for-fee EAP, and the 400%
improved utilization that one could expect from the latter. Mark shy's
away from calling these managed-care driven programs. This is a
disappointment and the elephant in the living room. But his research is
solid content for EAPs seeking a new home in the risk world--one where
they will be full appreciated. See my 2002 article on this topic here that discusses these issues more directly EAPs Help Limit Behavioral Exposures from the NATIONAL UNDERWRITER INSURANCE MAGAZINE
