New Initiative to 'Digitize' Workers Comp

 An email came across my desk today that intrigued me. It was an announcement of a new insurance industry initiative to digitize Workers Compensation insurance. You can take look at it: https://www.wcdigit.org/

Now, here are my initial thoughts on this. I'm a big believer in unintended consequences. And I currently get a lot of work from the current Workers Comp insurance system that overcharges a lot of employers through technical errors. I suspect this digitization thing might put that sort of thing on steroids.

And worse, this new initiative says one of the benefits of this digitization thing would be to somehow automate fraud detection. That worries me.

Because we already see a steady stream of work from California, where employers are often charged with criminal fraud over honest mistakes in filling out forms about their Workers Comp insurance. That's because California has enacted statutes that make it easy to accuse employers of criminal fraud over their Workers Comp insurance premiums. If that kind of thing gets automated, with algorithms created by the insurance industry, I suspect our workload will considerably increase in the portion of my consulting work that involves helping to defend employers against bogus fraud charges.

Sigh. Brave New World.