Workers’ compensation claims were denied at highest rates in recent years according to Minnesota Department of Labor.
By Lonce Lamonte - September 8, 2023
Claims payers denied a record breaking number of workers’ compensation claims in 2021.
With COVID-19 related claims out of the count, the record-high of non-COVID claims was still there.
The COVID-19 related claims were denied more at 39% in the year 2021. Other claims which were non-COVID related got denied about 24% of the time.
This data came from Minnesota’s Department of Labor and Industry.
A law brought in early 2020, just after the national announcement of the COVID-10 pandemic, some first responders and healthcare workers were allowed to receive workers’ compensation benefits for COVID-19 infections, with the assumption these individuals were infected at work. To deny a claim, the burden was on the employer and claims payer to prove the employee got the infection outside of work.
That assumption was extended beyond the initial expiration date, and a couple more extensions came until the last one expired on January 13th 2023.
The assumption didn’t apply to meatpacking and some other industries where COVID-19 was prevalent. In these places, employees had to struggle to prove they caught COVID from work in spite of the insufficient safety precautions and close quarters in most of the plants.
In an analysis of workers’ compensation claims in February of 2021 done by the Minnesota Star Tribune, 935 COVID-19 related claims filed by meatpacking workers were found to have produced no payments to workers or their healthcare providers.
The Department of Labor and Industry report did not provide an explanation for the increased denial rate for non-COVID-19 claims.
lonce@adjustercom.com; Lonce Lamonte, journalist
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