Derek Jones: Good afternoon everybody. This is Derek Jones with ClearCare Online. Thank you for attending our webinar today which is The Secret Sauce: Top 10 Tips to Reduce Work Comp Premiums for Home Care. Let’s get started. Our agenda today, we’re first going to go over a history of worker’s comp. Why the top insurers give home care a hard time? This has been a topic that has been really challenging our industry and we want to make sure that we’re giving you all of the best tips and advice to tackle something that is typically one of your top blind items in your business.
We’re then going to dive directly through and give you ten proven tips to earn worker’s comp credit and these are specific credits for home care which we’re excited to bring to you because you can implement these best practices tomorrow to start saving on worker’s comp. We then, we are announcing also on this webinar the launch of WorkSafe Central which is an integrated caregiver safety program that will streamline the credit process and safety in your agency. We want to let you know about how that can additionally help you earn the maximum amount of credits but also keep caregivers safe and clients happier.
I am Derek Jones here with ClearCare Online based out of our San Francisco office. Before joining ClearCare, I managed a group of home care agencies, eight of them in the Philadelphia market. I remember getting the worker’s comp slips that would come in the mail. The renewal notices and holding my breath before I open the envelope, I know that it was a very challenging topic and I think you’ll be pleased to see how ClearCare is approaching this. I’d also like to open the floor for Dean to introduce himself. Dean is our expert panelist and we’re not only happy to have him on the webinar today but he’s also an official member of the ClearCare team. With that, I will turn it over to Dean to do an intro.
Dean Watters: Thanks, Derek. Hello everyone. I have been in insurance industry for about 25 years. I have an extensive background as an underwriter. That is taking risk on behalf of insurance carriers and the net result of that is always likely more premium than the claim’s cost. I have a fairly large background in evaluating risks and determining how risk could be reduced and thus, premiums can be reduced. Prior to joining ClearCare, I worked for ADP and introduced insurance to ADP’s 800,000 payroll clients and after that, started working with ClearCare as a consultant and I thought that ClearCare had such a unique opportunity to deliver safety in risk management practices to its customers that I was fortunate enough that they ask me to join the firm and really excited to be offering WorkSafe Central and the insurance product that’s supported.
Derek Jones: Thanks, Dean. Now on today’s webinar, we have just under 400 registered attendees. A lot of you are a current ClearCare customers today and some are industry individuals and some are people considering ClearCare. Just an overview, Clearcare is a software platform. We’re a company based out of San Francisco. We have over 100 employees that are solely dedicated to producing a piece of software and a platform that helps home care agencies manage their business. Our platform helps with client acquisition, caregiver management, the delivery of care and also the operations in your business.
You can see all of the individual modules that we offer here today and of course one of those being WorkSafe Central which we will focus predominantly on today. As that drop, we know this year has been very … It’s been tough for a home care agency owner. Regulation is up. A lot of the regulation with overtime and the affordable care act are putting pressure on your business, not only from an operational perspective finding caregivers who can work hours and not being able to offer as many live in shift, but also your margins are being squeezed in a way that really they never have.
This year, a lot of regulation has come quickly. What we’re hoping you’ll see with this webinar is tips that you can implement that will help you save and paint the best picture for worker comp’s credit, but also with WorkSafe Central, many agencies are already saving enough with the ClearCare insurance to actually cover the cost of ClearCare or to increase their margins where they historically in the past, especially this year maybe have to even raise rates because of some of the regulation that’s taking place. We’re all in this together, though we know there’s been a lot of regulation this year but we’re hoping that the WorkSafe Central is actually a sign of relief in a way that your agency can maybe win back some of that margin that you’ve lost this year.
Dean Watters: Prior to putting this together, I did a little research on the history of work comp and there are some interesting facts. Work comp in some form or another gates back to 2,000 DC in which there was monetary compensation for the lost of a body part. I didn’t do all the split scathe of things that does today but that’s basically the beginning of worker’s comp and I also found out during the revolutionary war when private cares or pirates were supporting the governors of the independent states that they offer a similar form of worker’s compensation to the pirate.
Hundred pieces of eight for an eye. In colonial times, that represented about 15 weeks of earnings. Lost of a left arm, 500 pieces of eight. Lost of a right arm, 600 pieces of eight. Right was with more than a left, not quite unique. One catch though, you have to survive the injury in order to collect your pieces of eight. In terms of modern times, in the little 1800’s in the US, they started backing and forth this liability after which allow them full lean to sue employers. Basically personal injury lawsuits and it’s not surprising. That was very unsuccessful. Employees were not able to sue employers successfully because they do not have the financial resources to do it. Then, in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt introduced a work comp while covering federal workers and states began to follow shortly after in all state at work comp laws by 1949 and laws have not changed much since then.
Next slide. Let’s talk about work comp premiums and what drives those cost and what we’re talking about is the risk associated with the business and why underwriters look at home care differently than other businesses and why they price them differently. The first thing is if you have unsupervised caregivers. There are employees who are doing things without the benefit and having supervisor managers watching them day to day. Secondly, uncontrolled work environment. It’s not a shop to work, caregivers are going to various homes to different work environment every time. It’s uncontrolled, they can change from visit to visit and so there’s some uncertainty there in terms of the SafeWork environment.
Inefficient claims of processing in general, the best time to handle the claim is the moment it happens and very often, as business owners, you become unaware of a claim until after a few days because the caregiver decided not to tell you about it or they went to a clinic on the roll, but then it becomes a work comp claim and that can draw your cost up substantially because you really don’t have any control over it from the very beginning or at least your insurance period doesn’t.
Then lastly, lack of a strong documented safety plan. I think the key here is to document it. A lot of you have very good plans in place but they’re not necessarily written, auditable and therefore, when you look at this from an underwriter’s perspective what’s occurring, they don’t necessarily see evidence that in fact the safety practices that are employed are actually existing. Very often, underwriters not having the information at hand will make decisions that it doesn’t exist.
Next, we just want to talk a little bit about how the rate is determined and how the final premium is determined and just for reference, the way it works is there’s always a percentage of $100 of payroll. This says on the slide, you have a 2% rate means for every $100 of payroll cost this $2 on the work comp. The basic calculation is the payroll that you have that you project for the year or if you’re on a pay as you go program that you record each payroll period multiplied by the classification rates. Home care has a rate, restaurants have a care, restaurants has a rate, carpenters have a rate and I will talk to you a little bit more about that but it’s a standard rate that’s filed by the … Each insurance care filed a rate in states and that determines a manual premium.
As the slide indicates, the first three payroll and classifications are not controllable but the next two are experienced modification factors and credits. Experienced modification is determined by the state. It is based on pack loss history. Every policy holder’s loss of information is recorded to the state every year and it goes back usually three or four years and that determines your experienced modification factor. It is comparing your business to the average home care agency in your state or in your region depending on whether the states come together and basically combine their data. For example, Pennsylvanian dollar.
When you have losses and you have claims, those are reported into the state and the state will produce a modification factor that compares you to the average in the industry, 1.0 is the industry average. They can go as high as 2.0 or higher and it goes lowest .5 and that is the competitive issue when you’re above 1.0. Next is credit and that is basically what the underwriter establishes for your particular business by evaluating safety and risk management practices and other things like that.
Let’s just start with the rate. This is an example that are actually accurate. One of the worst rates you could possibly imagine and not surprise in your service performers it has a lot of small piece that’s a lot of potential for problem. A lot of uncontrolled work environment with animals and the variety of things like that. Basically, businesses that are operating circuses are paying $50 for every $100 of payroll for their work comp. This is astronomical but insurance underwriters don’t like that class of business.
There are also many other classes that are very high, you can imagine roofers and those sort of demolition and things like that. On the very low [inaudible 00:12:59], people that go into an office everyday, never leave. You have very little risk of any kind of injury, that would be anything other than first eight so there are about .2%. The home care industry in general and it depends on the state, it can go as low as 1 or 2% to 10% and the differences are pretty dramatic. California is around 10% whereas recently received a price in Virginia and that was around 1%. It can really vary by the state and the reason it varies so much is that each state has their own schedule of benefits.
Basically their medical protocols that are required, the indemnity payments which are the payments that are made for loss wages and so California is very commonly always has very rich benefits and so they provide and mandate very rich benefits for the injured worker and that’s reflected in the rate. Next again, the experience modification factor. It’s really very simple. It’s based on the previous loss experience. You have loss the supply if you don’t have loss of the slope and the key here really is it’s always backward looking. When you have a history of losses but you have implemented practices that have a limited losses or minimize the cost of the losses, it takes quite a long time for those to be reflected in your experienced modification factor. Right now if you have an experienced modification factor and I am telling you right now in 2015, that means that your losses in its high, that means your losses in 2012, 13th and 14th are driving that [net worth 00:15:01].
As you can imagine what happens as the 2012 year comes off and then the 2015 year comes on and that will be your 2016 experienced modification factor. If you got a lot of losses since 2012 that you think has been very modest in the last three years when your new experienced modification factor comes out in 2016, it will be lower but if you have the year that’s leaving, perhaps you have fewer losses in the career you are entering, the experienced modification factor will go up. It’s always backward looking and you’re paying basically for losses that occurred years ago even though that kind of loss or that kind of incident may not recur.
Derek Jones: Hey Dean, we have a question that came in live here. I think it would be good to answer here. We have a question. When the flight says loss experience, is that referring to claims or actual claims that resulted or I guess, what we take successful claims? Claims that where there was an actual injury and where payout from the worker’s comp fund as needed?
Dean Watters: Loss experience really is the accumulation of all the losses. When we talk about losses, when you have a claim, it is a reserve that’s put on the claims and work comp is actually the time it takes for claims to close it off is often very long. The insurance company will always put up a reserve that is based on their assessment as the ultimate cost of the claim. Every claim is reserved given if it’s closed that obviously will cast the cost but if it’s open, so has the ability to go up. When we talk about loss experience, that’s just that. That’s all the accumulation that’s the aggregate of all of those claims whether they’re open or whether they’re closed. Does that cover that question?
Derek Jones: Yeah. That sounds great. Thanks, Dean.
Dean Watters: Thanks. All right. Let’s move on to credits. Next slide please. A credit versus the experience one which is backward looking, very often the credit is forward looking. What the underwriter can do, they have the digression in all but a couple of state to apply credits or debit based on their assessment or their prediction of the losses that will occur going forward. Just keep in mind, their job is to make money for the insurance company. They collect the premium and that premium needs to be higher than the total of the [law 00:18:00] is what’s their company expenses. They’re always trying to adjust their premium charge based on losses. They know what they were in the past but now they have to look forward into the future.
If they don’t have any information that would provide them with some insight into steps that are taken to reduce losses and they tend to fall on the conservative side. They’re going to look at various things that will allow them to give credit. It’s the competitive business, they’re not out there just to charge the highest price. Insurance agents, their job is to go out and find the most competitive. We go to many failures. We put them in competition for each other. We put the underwriters in competition with each other to give us the best possible price but the goal really is for the underwriter to feel comfortable at the lowest possible price and in order to do that, they need to be able to assess the business and a safety practices and predict what the future will bring.
What we have done with WorkSafe Central is we’ve tried to react to what the underwriters will look at and this was put together with the assistance of the number of insurance companies in terms of what their underwriters look for and what they believe will be driving factors in terms of reducing the uncertainty so that they can predict a lower loss comp. WorkSafe Central attempts to address all of it, hiring, pre-employment, best practices. That’s really important obviously what their … This involves things like selecting the right employees, background checks, drug testing, MBR’s, physicals, all of those are recorded, documented and we assist with the provision of those for our customers.
Training is obviously very important for these to be ongoing, better to be in small pieces, safety reminders, WorkSafe Central is designed to do that. In terms of scheduling, skills based scheduling really means matching a caregiver with a client. It’s very reassuring to an underwriter to know that if you have a caregiver that has difficulty lifting that they’re not placed with a client that requires a lot of lifting. To be able to inform an insurance underwriter that we have skill based scheduling is very reassuring to them to know that we’re not creating a situation where a loss could occur.
The other is which I mentioned before was this, the work environment and not knowing each time whether change in caregiver’s working in an uncertain work environment. What we’ve done is we’ve established the ability to provide home safety assessments to be able to allow you to structured a structured process, evaluate the safety in the work environment and to be able to document it. Document it in a way that you can provide evidence you’re doing that to an underwriter so that they are aware that although it is not a secured work environment in terms of the shop floor, it is one in which you evaluated it and you’re constantly monitoring it for safe situations.
Next is managing incident. That would be essentially in two parts. One is identifying incidents early and we created a device in order to achieve that and to be able to manage it quickly, to be able to address it quickly in a way that will ultimately reduce the cost and may in fact not even result in a claim because often, an incident or an injury may just be on first day and if it’s addressed quickly and the caregiver has taken care of, often they don’t feel a need to have a claim file which is ideal.
The other course, once the claim, once someone have gone off work because of an injury, there needs to be a mechanism to help them return to work in a way that’s positive and ultimately reduces the cost. Then lastly, recording mechanism. Recording for you to see how things are going from a risk management [inaudible 00:23:07] perspective and a mechanism for us to deliver data for you so that you can prevent it ultimately with underwriter who can see all of these things that are being conducted and therefore, give the credit that are beneficial to you in terms of your overall work comp cost.
Derek Jones: Thanks Dean for going in the detail there. I think if you’re a current customer, we had a question here, is this built in to the platform? Yes. I think that is one of the beautiful parts of the program is you will see when we approach the insurance carriers about these items that would make them more comfortable underwriting you, many of these things you noticed are already thing that are built into ClearCare today. It was about packaging these items.
Then, there are certainly some additional items that we’ve developed within WorkSafe Central to give additional functionality within ClearCare but all of the WorkSafe Central program is within a tab within ClearCare just like you have clients, caregivers and reports that as we’re developing that there is a tab. All of these is inside of ClearCare at your fingertips instead of that safety binder that more than likely in many cases, even though they were well intentioned to agencies often times that safety programs sits on a shelf and collect stuff. Even if you do reference it, it’s normally reactive when the situation occurs instead of that program being included and infused in the day to day activity that you’re taking place. I turn it back over to you there.
Dean Watters: I tell you what? ClearCare WorkSafe is made up of two things. One is the WorkSafe Central Software which we talked about and the other parts too is work comp insurance. CCO, ClearCare Online Insurance Solutions is an insurance agency that we have formed which is as we developed this program, WorkSafe Central with insurance carriers and their underwriters. They not only were stressing in helping this development but they also ask if we would be in a position to distribute work comp insurance and that manifested itself ourselves and our abilities to offer upfront for our customers who are adopting WorkSafe.
Instead of waiting a year and saying, “I’ve been using WorkSafe Central and here’s all the features, the functionality that is helping me from a risk management and safety perspective are the insurance carriers that we have partnered with are willing to give the discount before this is actually implemented leaving that the components of WorkSafe Central will ultimately resulted in a better underwriting process and stuff that you have the credits upfront which is where we’re thrilled to offer.
Just to run down … Yes, we’re good there. I think what we want to do is we want to go through the top ten in terms of what we can convey to you that will address underwriter’s concerns or skepticism and then, of course what WorkSafe Central Solution will be to it. The first thing is obviously, and I think this applies in many things not just work comps either the right people and the means to do that is certainly through an interview process that you will go through in terms of list specific set that you are looking for in a caregiver and a cultural state and the things that as business owners, we have to make this kind of decisions on people all the time but there’s also some more meaningful checks that aren’t necessarily used all the time but probably shouldn’t usually result in better results and those are background check, drug testing, reemployment physicals and MBRs, if you do all of those things along with the traditional caregiver assessment, then chances are you have a higher probability of getting people in the job that will not ultimately incur claims or incur injuries.
The WorkSafe Central solution is we have the ability for you to order background checks, order drug testings, pin point physicals and where the vehicle checks all within the ClearCare platforms and not only are you able to actually do this for new hires, you also have a repository for that data so it sits there. Should anyone ever want to see it like an underwriter slightly available and you’re not having to pull out personnel files and do that and in general, what we’re finding with our insurance carriers is they don’t really care about individual information. They care about the business so they’re looking at aggregate data not just was a background check put on to this person, they’re saying, “Is it the general practice of business from the background checks?” This is data that we can provide on your behalf to use so you can use it or we can provide it to an insurance care partner of ours.
The next tip is obviously the training caregivers and train them regularly. They need to be able to know how to do this job and they need to be reminded to ask in a safe manner and not take risk and typically obviously that comes through onboarding in terms of the training and your expectations and that when you have the opportunity, I am sure you continually provide them with training. In WorkSafe Central, what you’ll have is automated safety messaging, the email and text. These will be done regularly and they will be done cast specific as well so that when you’re sending a caregiver into a situation in which they’re going to be dealing with the [poll 00:30:12] risk that they’re aware with it and that they take appropriate cautions for themselves as well as for the client.
For any employee, it really doesn’t matter. One offer, safe working environment. In your business, you tell them its unique, its different changes and there could be hazards to the workers. I am sure that you conduct home safety checks to make sure that the home is suitable for a caregiver and it doesn’t create risks and what we’ve designed is that integrated home safety assessment of WorkSafe Central. Here’s an example of it. It will guide you through in a very deliberate manner to assess on all parts of the home that are important and it allows so you could see to take photographs where need be and also you’re able to deliver this information to your client or to the client’s families so if there are any issues that are not just a risk to the caregivers but also to the client that they’ve been aware of them and can address them.
Number four, assign caregivers to clients possibly. That’s basically matching. That’s putting the right caregiver in the right situation with the right client. I am sure that you have a mechanism for that now and WorkSafe Central is that solution for us. Derek, you want to talk to a little bit about this?
Derek Jones: Yeah. Absolutely. The ClearCare Solution for this, again like Dean mentioned, you guys are in the business of providing quality care. This is not to suggest that you do not have a thoughtful process of assigning caregivers into the home, however it’s hectic. You need to … Social worker called on Friday. You have a list of 100 caregivers and you need to make that referral in the next hour. Those pressures come up all the time for you and you always want to send the right caregiver in but we know sometimes even just with the supply of caregivers being very limited, we just returned back from the decision health private duty conference and this was one of the number one topics which is agency is more than ever are feeling pressure to either decline cases in some situations or to send caregivers into the home who they don’t feel … They feel comfortable that the caregiver is safe but they would like additional assurance that that caregiver has the right skills to meet the client.
ClearCare solution to that is care finder with skills based matching. The way that this works is once you load a client in the ClearCare, you’re able to create a plan of care that includes activities and also had pre-defined ADL and IADL that the client needs. Within that care plan, you’re able to identify which of those attributes are preferred and required. You can see here on this screen, this is a screenshot of how ClearCare handle this. Let’s say you need to fill a shift very quickly, you enter the client’s information, you’re able to go in and then make sure that the caregiver you’re matching up is going to meet the needs of their clients, both preferred and required and then, the ClearCare platform automatically serves up the caregivers that not only meet this criteria but also meet this availability as some caregivers may already be on assignment.
It’s an automated way to do this even if you’re an agency that has five to ten clients, this is helpful but especially for agencies to have hundreds of caregivers and are feeling pressure to make sure that they get the right caregiver in, this is the way we’re certainly not advocating this that this takes up the human component. You know the caregiver’s personalities. You know which ones have the best bedside manner but this is a way especially to make sure that the hard skills that are required by the client are met.
Dean Watters: Thank you. The fifth credit is the safety feedback at the end of every shift. Really what we’re talking about here is claims cost management. It’s being aware of any incident as soon as possible after it occurred. As you can see by the slide, the inflation of cost on claims is dramatic when they are not addressed immediately. Very often as I mentioned earlier, a caregiver will be injured. If you think it is modest, no big deal and then something, and then it just gets worse. Then a week later, you find out about it and you’ve lost control of the claims cost and it just … They can go through the roof and these are factual, cost of injury’s right, 50% after the first week, 150% after the second week if they are not out reported timely.
The other often that can occur is that claims that are Sunday afternoon, soccer accidents become Monday morning claims and what we are providing with WorkSafe Central is a [inaudible 00:36:35] system that asked at the end of every shift, did you have an injury pre-shift today, so that there is a record. It’s a documented record that they indicated that there were no incidents occurred or no injury that occurred. It does not prevent them from filing a claim but it sure helps in mitigating claims cost when there is a document record that they indicated that is not incur any kind of injury during that shift.
That provides a good record for minimizing claims cost. On the flip side of it, if you’re getting an indication they did not have a day shift, then you get immediate notification that something occurred and that you’re able to communicate with them and find out what happens and address it at that time to determine perhaps whether it is a work comp claim and that it should be filed right away and the process can be implemented very quickly so you’re aware of it. The assumption of course is that every shift is a safe shift but in that [inaudible 00:37:57], it’s not, you don’t buy it right away.
The respond with priority to on the job injury which is very much related to what I just said but the other component to it is if there is an on the job injury, what do you do? Very often there’s uncertainty as to how to respond and perhaps you have from your insurance carrier or from your broker, you have a clinic that you can send them to but often what happens is you end up sending them to the emergency room if it’s a back problem or something that really can’t be held by sending them to a small clinic.
What we have negotiated is the nursing triage, online 24/7 in which you can talk to a nurse, advice them of what happened and they can give you advice of how to handle it. They will tell you whether it’s a work comp claim and it should be filed. They will tell you whether it’s a first day claim, it does not need to be filed. They can give you advice as to where to send your insured bill so that they’re taking care of and they’re kind of end up the work comp process right away.
By doing that, you ultimately will reduce the cost and I think the added benefit, number seven, you’re showing an [inaudible 00:39:44] care and generally, often what happens is when anybody is injured [inaudible 00:39:53] caregiver. They’re no longer part of your schedule in terms of you’re working. They go into the work comp system and they’re often treated differently or not treated as employee as any longer but yet they are. The fact of the matter is that in order to reduce your work comp claims, what you would do is you want them to get back to work as soon as possible. You want them to have a positive attitude about returning to work, we don’t want them go to attorney and so, there needs to be a process in place to stay in touch with them and to find a way to bring them back to work if possible in a limited capacity, modified duty and to … Let’s say we have the mechanism to do that.
We don’t have the ability to communicate with the caregiver like I am suggesting but we have a protocol to assist you in staying in touch with them and getting them back to work so that the claim can be closed and the cost can capped. Number eight is create a team environment around safe results. Typically as I am sure, you’ve had experience in some capacity or another, the shop floor, the manufacturing floor. I saw the cost the other day, there’s a sign up there. It was like 120 days injury free.
Those are companies that are creating an environment, a team environment in which everybody is aware to work safely so that they don’t have injuries and I think that very often psychologically that is so surprising that number grows and grows and grows. It is difficult in your industry to create that team environment but through our platform which just give up on the screen, you can see that what we’re trying to do is create that very same thought form environment in which that we create excitement around keeping claims down, incidents down and that will create an opportunity for everybody to be aware of the results, not anything other than just a sort of thing but it’s something that we think will truly help all around. It will help any managers and it will help the caregivers.
Number nine. This one I’ve covered, I am sure. Underwriters need evidence. They’re very accustomed to hearing the things are occurring and later finding out when there’s a claim that they weren’t occurring and so there’s this skeptical vision of anything particularly when it’s presented by an insurance agent on their behalf. Obviously the goal is to document your program and be able to provide it to anybody that wants to see it and this is a dashboard that will allow you to do that, be able to put in your safety plan. You will be able to have a record of your injuries and a variety of other things that will help support your program.
Lastly, once it’s documented, you want to be able to communicate it to your insurance underwriter. I think that in general, an insurance agent will try and represent you in terms of getting the best possible credit but I lost and found that an underwriter would likely hear it from the actual business themselves and they want some kind of documentation. They want it, so it’s communicated to them. That does a lot of more than the broker is saying, “Yeah.” They do it. Having that documentation is really valuable in terms of maximizing a number of credits that you can get and through WorkSafe Central, that will all be there.
All of that information is available. It will be easy to extract and get ultimately into an insurance underwriter’s hand who will then give you the best price they possibly can based on their understanding of your safety and risk management practices.
Derek Jones: What we have on the screen here is ClearCare wants to make this process easy for you because even if you are using WorkSafe Central and what ClearCare Online Insurance does is we need a way and a mechanism to convey that the benefits which Dean just covered, how is this agency different from all of the others and why should they get the maximum consideration for credits? There’s two parts to this. One, we’ve created the documentation around what the WorkSafe program is and why you as an agency who are implementing this within ClearCare should be considered best in class.
The second thing we’ve done is we’ve partnered with insurance underwriters who understand the power of the WorkSafe Program and who Dean and his team have already negotiated, pre-negotiated credits on your behalf. When we submit this, we’re likely always sending this to insurance carriers who understand the program and we’ve done that in a way where we’ve created this document that you don’t have to go out and create it, that way we have a chance to consistently give you the credits that are taking place by the use of WorkSafe Central. Dean, I will turn it over to you to cover a little bit more about ClearCare online insurance and how agencies can get started with the quote.
Dean Watters: Okay. Yes. What we did in terms of working with the insurance carriers in developing WorkSafe naturally, they came to the conclusion that if WorkSafe was implemented that it would create a best in class group and naturally underwriters are looking for that kind of business to insure and so, they then establish relationship with us from an underwriting perspective and we formed an insurance agency in order to deliver licensed insurance sales people and service people not unlike any other insurance agency except we are focused solely on ClearCare customers and we are focused solely on worker’s compensation.
What I’ve done over the course of the last number of months prior to a number of their experience licensed insurance people who are able to work with you to prepare applications for insurance and work with the carriers that we have contracted with most of who give discounts upfront or just for the fact that you’re a ClearCare customer and then add additional discounts based on your adoption rate of WorkSafe Central. So far, we’ve had great success with a number of ClearCare customers.
Derek Jones: To blow color into that, first I want to mention that well, ClearCare has just this year started writing policies or brokering these policies with the underwriters, Dean’s experience building this program, similar program to ADP is what it’s really driving the success, the relationships with some other top insurance carriers in the world. Then the insight on that WorkSafe Central program are the two components. I see a lot of questions coming through. Do I have to be using ClearCare today to get the benefits? The answer is yes, that there is a lot of questions on that and the power of the program is the integration of the elements of the WorkSafe program that Dean walks through, those ten steps. Without those, you are a home care agency that may have best practices but may not have as powerful of a narrative as an agency that has the program built in and one that ClearCare is already pre-negotiated credits with specific insurance carriers.
We want to walk through a couple of examples of owners who are seeing big results with the WorkSafe program and the credits. One of our first agency earners who is in San Diego, just outside of San Diego, [Jonah Oversend 00:49:51] of Green Tree Home Care. She saved enough on her insurance premiums, pay for the ClearCare platform. Whatever she is paying per month for ClearCare, she was able to actually cover the cost of that [anthem 00:50:06] and when she gave us the reasons why she chose this, lower premium, automated caregiver safety program and peace of mind for everyone.
I know when I talked to [Jonah 00:50:14] recently, she said, “Hey, I have a safety program but I am a home care agency owner. I am not a licensed clinician who can put together a return to work program. I could buff it up and even if I did, it’s going to sit on the binder somewhere on a shelf.” She was not only happy that she stayed with the premium but she actually said that she would have purchased the insurance through ClearCare Online Insurance even if the rates were on par with what she was paying today because she had the power of the WorkSafe program.
It empowers her team to be involved in the safety of all the caregivers and she’s actually going out and marketing this program as a differentiator for her agency. As we know, social workers even families many times where they want to know who they’re working with at the agency but the families as you know fall in love with the caregivers and they want to know that the caregivers are taking care of, that if there is an injury, that it’s going to be taking care of by the agency that there’s not risk or risk that’s not needed to the client when there is an injury and that the client’s not going to have to deal with that down win process.
Another testimonial that we received from Dave from Home Instead, he said, “I was on a mission to find a better solution,” after his current insurance premium skyrocketed from a questionable claim. The WorkSafe program gave him the tools to easily manage and automate a safety program, quickly take actions on incidents that’s due to the [inaudible 00:51:51] system that Dean mentioned and because caregivers are able to report injuries in real time and he was able to receive a lower premium by 50%.
We talked about the reason why he chose, the cost savings were huge. Immediate incident reporting and response and I think when we talked to Dave, you’ve heard that the use of the WorkSafe program will give you the best chance to get credits but we know too, it’s about the caregiver. It’s about making sure that they do state safe. They are the life boat of the business and when we talk to someone like Dave, he’s excited about the insurance premium saving but equally is not more excited about, “Hey, if there is an injury, a legitimate injury, let’s not wait three, four weeks to make sure that that gets claimed.” Then that caregiver has a much less likely chance to return to work or they’re just going to work injured.
They’re going to work in an uncomfortable situation which also put the client at risk and Dave as a large owner, has a lot of stuff, the ability for the WorkSafe Central product to be integrated right in the ClearCare instead of on the binder, on a shelf somewhere was also important.
Dean Watters: [crosstalk 00:53:06] just make one comment on this. This one we’re actually particularly excited about because as you recall when I talked about the calculation of premiums that single large claim was driving his experience modification very high and what we’re able to do is because [inaudible 00:53:28] he got a bunch of credits which then basically mitigated the impacts of that experience modification factor. This is a great example of someone who has to have some quote off experience as a result of paying a premium on their work comp cost and taking on WorkSafe and working with one of our carriers allowed them to get credits would basically took away that negative from their experience modification.
Derek Jones: The third here, Danny from Preferred Care at Home. “Choosing ClearCare from my worker’s compensation insurance was an easy decision. ClearCare provided the best rates and savings along with the great insurance professional customer service team.” When he listed the reasons, competitive rates, easy incident management and reporting and also the integration within ClearCare. Dean, I will turn it back over you just do a quick summary of the program with WorkSafe versus others and then, we’ll open it up for Q&A.
Dean Watters: Sure. Yeah. Just to summarize, there’s a safety and risk management program to barely risk the complexity that every business has and works safe, that’s integrated right into our platform and a traditional sense in the binder or spread amongst our drive and it’s rarely used. The likelihood of credits as results of WorkSafe and the relationships that CCO Insurance Solutions have established with insurance carriers, we have pre-negotiated pricing based on the adoption of WorkSafe Central and the other case, you hope for it. You do your best in terms of developing a safety and risk management policy and practices and you hope your broker can get you some credits based on what you’re doing to reduce exposures and lowest claims cost.
In terms of timing of the credit, we’ve mentioned because we pre-negotiated them because the carriers that we’re working with have then sold on the idea that this risk management practices that are part of WorkSafe resulted very result and they’re sold on because they helped us develop them. They are prepared to give up front credit whereas in general in the traditional market, you have to implement all of this stuff learn to risk management safety and you have to see really good results in your claims and then you get the credit. You have to spend the money to implement a program and then hope that you’re ultimately going to save on your work comp cost whereas that’s not the case with WorkSafe.
Derek Jones: We’re going to open it up for Q&A. There’s a lot of great questions, so we’ll be sure to address as many of them as we can. There’s also a lot of direct questions on how do you get a quote. We have a separate website, ccoinsurance.com. This is a free, no obligation quote. You can go to the website. There’s a very simple form that you can fill out. The form is safe and secure. That will route to one of the ClearCare Insurance reps who will then, shoot you to an email back and let you know a time where they can catch up with you and the required paper work and documentation that’s needed to get you a quote.
If you want to just give them a call, the phone number is up here as well. If you are a current customer in the email that we sent out for this webinar, we did offer. There is a offer that extend one free month of ClearCare or WorkSafe Central free for a year and there is a couple of factors based on which of those you would receive that hinges on when your renewal date is, all you have to do is submit for a quote or give us a call and we’ll let you know. Either one of those that you qualify that every ClearCare customer will qualify or either a free month of ClearCare were WorkSafe Central free for one year for just getting a quote. All you have to do is just get a quote, let us show you how competitive the program is and that is the bonus promotion for the webinar.
With that, I am going to open up the Q&A panel. For Q&A, there is a go-to webinar panel in your upper right hand screen. The panel has an orange button that should be facing left. If you press that, the control panel for go-to webinar will expand and the question panel will be below. All you have to do is type in your question and Dean and I can see that and we will go right to the Q&A. The first question we have is from [Tarsha 00:58:33] Carter out at Chicago. Hey Tarsha, it’s good to see you and Kevin last week in Philly. Her question is how much is WorkSafe Central?
WorkSafe Central is a separately priced product. Let me actually rephrase that. It can be a separately priced product or it can be free. WorkSafe Central, if you do not bind your insurance through ClearCare Online Insurance can cost anywhere between $10 to $12 per active client per month, that’s in addition to what you pay for ClearCare today. However, if you get a free quote and you bind your insurance with ClearCare, WorkSafe Central is absolutely free. All right. I’ll throw a couple of questions over to you, Dean. Dean, we have several questions about CleanCare Online Insurance, the product being one lump sum payment or pay as you go? Would you mind addressing that?
Dean Watters: Yes, certainly. Well, all you see we’ve negotiated variety of payments plans to meet your needs only if it’s a very small premium. Is it with a require annual payment? In general, it’s going to be deposit plus [inaudible 00:59:59] but in all instances, we offer pay as you go. That process is generally paying in a rears, you report payroll dated to the insurance carrier and at that point, they calculate the premium and collect it on a cycle. In our case, we’ve negotiated a cycle of your choice. Often, insurance companies are on … If you’re on a bi-weekly payroll, they want reported bi-weekly. In our case, if you’re on a bi-weekly payroll if you want to report it monthly which I believe is a very nice cash flow advantage that we’ve been able to negotiate.
Derek Jones: Great. Thanks, Dean. Dean, a lot of questions around how ClearCare went about selecting the insurance carriers or the underwriters, I should say that are extending the credit. There’s a lot of questions on who, which brand but I think it looks like the majority have found the question behind the questions regarding these quality providers. How do we go about selecting them? Yeah. Those are the questions.
Dean Watters: Well, what we actually did is we use a large broker, insurance brokerage, national broker who had their deep relationships with a lot of national A-rated carriers and we utilize their connections to find the right cares and frankly there was a fair amount of bidding for the business because obviously bidding want to be put in a position where we had a chance to different carriers but all of our carriers are A-rated, most of them are national. We have one that’s coming on screen that will address some western state specifically. We’ve been pretty careful in choosing them. We’ve had the ability to take our pin because in general, insurance companies want to write a variety of business.
They do want to write home care but they want to write the best of home care and so, when we’re able to show them all of this and the potential for it, not surprisingly, many, many insurance company, they’re so content up we’re adding more carriers, we have two more carriers coming on stream. We believe it’s important for us to create the competitive environment amongst all of them and I think we’ll continue to add care here or there when it took those in need. Our goal is to supervise the best possible price with the best possible care for you.
Derek Jones: Great. Thanks, Dean. A couple of questions from Jim. Jim’s asking, “Is the nurse triage available if you have ClearCare but do not buy the worker’s compensation insurance through ClearCare?”
Dean Watters: The nurse triage is something that we’ve negotiated directly to insurance companies that CCO Insurance Solutions is offering.
Derek Jones: Great. There’s another question. Jim also add, I think we address this but do we have to buy insurance from ClearCare to get WorkSafe Central? The answer is no. The WorkSafe Central product can be sold separately. However, most agencies are requesting a quote and they will get the WorkSafe Central product for free if they do bind their insurance to ClearCare Online Insurance. Let’s see. We have a few state specific questions, I am going to hold those and try to address. We will … Tom, Mike. There’s a few question that are very state specific so we’re writing those down and we’ll get those answers back to you. Dean, could you just address? We have a few questions on. Can we write insurance in all 50 states?
Dean Watters: Well, not all 50 because a number of them are monopolistic state. In other words, the state controls it, that would be Washington, North Dakota, Ohio and Wyoming. Those states, we were not able to offer insurance but the rest of the states where we’ve got care representation all over the states.
Derek Jones: Great. There is some request for clarification. Thank you, Julie. They’re asking directly. Is ClearCare providing the insurance?
Dean Watters: No. ClearCare is not an insurance comp. ClearCare, a CPO insurance solution, it’s an insurance agency and we’re contracted with insurance carriers who are the ones who take the risk. We function like a traditional insurance agency. Our goal is to work with you to present your application or submission to the carriers that we work with and negotiate the best possible price.
Derek Jones: Next question from Selena. Is there a minimum of sales or payroll to qualify for your insurance?
Dean Watters: No, not really. Each care has a certain minimum and we have more or less address that by asking some other carriers. No, there isn’t a minimum.
Derek Jones: Got it. Jim had another follow up question on the offer. Just to clarify, is ClearCare free if we buy insurance only for the first year? Correct. We pay for it after the first year. Just to clarify, what is offered for free is the WorkSafe Central module. ClearCare in and off itself need the separate agreement. We still have great product. We went over the breath of the ClearCare product at the beginning of the presentation. Once you are a ClearCare customer on the base of platform product, you can then turn on WorkSafe Central which has an additional fee if you do not sign up for insurance through ClearCare. However, that WorkSafe Central product is free if you do bind your insurance through ClearCare. Jim, I hope that clarifies. Let’s see a few more questions here. Let’s see. We have addressed a couple of these. Renee asked a question. How do I know that my insurance carrier will be part of the pre-negotiated rates? Dean?
Dean Watters: Well, when we present an application on your behalf on the insurance carriers, we’re only going to the carriers that we’ve negotiated upfront pricing with. We’re limiting our distribution of your application to only those carriers. We don’t have relationships with other carriers that aren’t willing to offer the pricing that we’ve negotiated with the small subset that we have.
Derek Jones: Great. Let’s see. I think we’ve addressed … There are again our state specific questions. Let me just scan the Q&A panel here. There are a few questions around when to get started? How early can they submit a quote? I will start off as then you can submit for a quote through ccoinsurance.com. Go ahead and give us your information which we’ll ask when your workers’ comp renewal date comes up, our sales team, our insurance reps will then reach out to you approximately 60 days out from your insurance quote. However, if we know many people on this call and the reason we’re running this webinar today is because you’re coming up on renewal, you’re getting this renewal notices for January 1st or mid-December. We want to make sure that you allow us to give you a competitive quote so while we can start the process as early as 60 … We can’t start any earlier than 60 days, but if you’re within that 60-day window, give us a call even if your quote is going to be renewing in a couple of weeks, give us a call and we can prioritize your submission.
By submitting the information on ccoinsurance.com, we will know when your renewal date is and then our team will follow up with you. Let’s see. Dean, I think the rest of the questions seemed to be state specific. Dean, do you want to summarize any takeaways? Then, we will close the webinar.
Dean Watters: Well, hopefully through this webinar, we’ve been able to give you some idea of what an underwriter looks at and how you can present or how well you can manage your business and present your risk management program in a way that will result in the best possible pricing. We’d like an opportunity within CCO Insurance Solutions to be able to help you get the best possible price by leveraging WorkSafe and getting those credits that really are probably not available anywhere else, certainly not upfront. Please visit our website or please give us a call and let us see what we can do for you.
Derek Jones: That sounds great. I will just pile on to that. Most individuals on this call are customer today. It costs nothing to get a quote. Our team can turn around the quotes very quickly and the savings can be significant. Many times they can cover the cost of ClearCare, in and off itself. If you are not a ClearCare customer today, you can still contact us and we can start a quote process while you demo the ClearCare product. We have some questions coming in about that as well. However, you would need to be on the ClearCare product using WorkSafe to get the maximum chance for the credits. With that, we’re going to close the webinar. This webinar was recorded. We will send out a recap of the recording within 48 hours and I want to thank Dean, our panelist and the entire ClearCare team for their hard work, all the product managers, multi-month, if not a year plus in the making for this product. Thank you all for your support and at that point, I will close the webinar. Thank you, Dean.
Dean Watters: You’re welcome.