Motivated Teams Improve Safety Programs and Practices – Health Care

Motivated Teams Improve Safety Programs and Practices – Rewards Seen in Results

United Heartland (UH) helped one of their customers — a complex, multi-faceted health care system — experience 50% lower claim frequency and 60% lower average cost per claim compared to data compiled of all UH’s hospital-based customers. Not only are these results impressive, so is the story of how we reached success together.

It was clear that with a few additional enhancements, we could together take the organization’s existing workers’ compensation program and safety practices to the next level. With this in mind, a deep-dive analysis of accidents/incidents was conducted, allowing the team to identify the leading causes of their primary risk exposures. A detailed gap analysis was also performed to review vendors, business unit inventories, equipment labeling, best practices training and other efforts to help mitigate these and other risks.

The customer’s injury prevention coordinator served as the main point of contact, which streamlined efforts and communication. Together, the teams met regularly to identify safety plan improvements and ensure continued forward momentum, while frequent claims reviews were also undertaken, which confirmed open claims had been handled promptly and effective return-to-work programs were in place.

Additionally, a trained committee was assigned to carefully review workers’ compensation reporting for all incidents. This level of focused involvement allowed for thoughtful recommendations to improve investigations while building meaningful relationships with injured workers.

Key to the entire process was the active involvement of the customer’s leadership team — ensuring safety program enhancements were adopted, and loss data and injury reports were reviewed regularly for transparency across all areas of the organization.

We are so proud of this success story, which clearly shows how active partnership among UH’s Loss Control, Claims and Client Relations teams, and a motivated customer can result in incredible improvements to not just the bottom line, but to safety programs and overall safety culture as well!