Drug Testing Can Make You Money “In a tough economy this could save the day.”

Everyone is struggling today.  Headlines everywhere talk of cutting costs, laying workers off and closing doors.  One place employers could find money but inexplicably are ignoring is workers compensation.  How?  Drug testing!

In virtually every state you can challenge a workers compensation claim if the employee was intoxicated at the time of the accident, and if that intoxication “contributed” to the cause of the accident.

Here’s what we know:

• 74.3% of current admitted drug users are employed.
   

• Up to 40 % of industrial fatalities and 47 percent of industrial injuries can be linked to alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
   

• 19% of those killed on the job in 1998 had drugs and/or alcohol present in postmortem toxicology report.
   

• Employers with drug testing have experienced a 51% reduction in workplace injury rates within two years of implementing a drug-testing program.
   

• A recent study showed that the average company sampled that has drug testing in place experienced an 11.41% reduction in workers’ compensation experience-rating modification factor. At the same time, companies that did not implement drug-testing programs saw no decline in their workers’ compensation experience-rating modification factor.
   

• 14 states offer workers compensation financial incentives (premium discounts/presumptive denial of benefits) to employers with drug-free workplace programs.

NCCI (National Council on Compensation Insurance – Boca Raton, FL) estimates that 38%-50% of all workers compensation claims involve a drug or alcohol issue.

Think about that last statistic for a second – 38%-50% of all workers compensation claims could be challenged!  Have you challenged any?  That’s where the money is! But you must know the rules that apply.

The Intoxication Defense:

Drug and alcohol use is a workers compensation issue. Did you know that in every state you could defeat a workers compensation claim if the employee was intoxicated and that intoxication contributed to the cause of the accident.  You are saying to yourself: "I’ve been told it can’t be done."

Who told you that?  Why did they tell you that?  In December of 2002 when an employer in Iowa wanted to challenge a $1.5 million workers compensation claim he was told that it couldn’t be done.  Yet, they did it!  That employer was self-insured to $350,000.  Paying this claim would have put them out of business!  It was stopped because they did their homework and discovered that the Iowa Supreme Court had, just months earlier, affirmed the denial of benefits to a claimant that was positive for alcohol at 0.09.  The claimant in their case was positive for cocaine and alcohol at 0.289!

How do you do it?

No one would tell you that every positive drug or alcohol test will result in a denial of a claim.  But, that’s where you start.  If you’re not doing post-accident testing you’re not even in the game.  You have to conduct post-accident/injury drug/alcohol tests; and you must conduct those tests in accordance with the rules that apply – per state law.  When there is a positive post-accident tests it must be determined if that could start the intoxication defense.

Here’s how it works:

An injury occurs.  A drug test is performed and is reported back positive.  Based upon a series of factors, you decide if that claim should be denied.  If the decision is to challenge then spring into action.  What’s there to loose?

W. J. Judge, JD, LL.M.

Center For Drug Test Information