Colorado High Court Rules Injured Can Pursue Both WC, Insurance Benefits 

• The Colorado Supreme Court clarified that state law does allow compensation for on-the-job injuries from both workers’ compensation and their employer’s insurance company for the acts of an at-fault motorist.
• “…while an employee cannot pursue a remedy for an injury against an employer or a co-employee, an employee can pursue a remedy when the employee is injured by the negligence of a third party,” wrote Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter.
• According to media reports, different federal judges had reached opposite conclusions about Colorado’s workers’ compensation law prior to the state Supreme Court weighing in.
• The case, Klabon v. Travelers Property Casualty Company of America, centered on an incident where the employee, Kevin Klabon, was on the job, operating a company vehicle in 2019 when another driver injured him. 
• The at-fault driver was underinsured, thus his vehicle insurance did not fully cover Klabon’s injuries.
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WCRI Study Explores Effect of Lawyers on WC Payments

• A new study from the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute explores whether having a lawyer involved in a workers’ compensation case has an effect on the indemnity payments that workers receive following a work-related injury to help them cover their loss of income.
• “While the workers’ compensation system was envisioned as an administrative and predictable system for dealing with the consequences of work-related injuries, disputes that lead to attorney involvement in the system remain common,” said Sebastian Negrusa, vice president of research at WCRI. 
• “High rates of attorney involvement in the system have contributed to the debate about the impact of attorney involvement on the benefits delivered to workers with injuries,” he said.
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Dashboard Tracks Opioid Abuse, Dependence State by State

• FAIR Health, a national nonprofit, has released an opioid tracker, a free, interactive tool tracking abuse and dependence state by state.
• The Opioid Tracker includes a heat map representing the percentage of patients with opioid abuse and dependence diagnoses compared to all patients receiving medical services in 2023 for each state, according to MedicalXpress.com.
• The infographic includes the top five procedure codes by utilization for opioid abuse and dependence, the top five procedure codes by aggregate allowed amounts for opioid abuse and dependence, the change in the percentage of patients with opioid abuse and dependence diagnoses compared to all patients receiving medical services from 2020 to 2023, and the distribution of patients with opioid abuse and dependence diagnoses by age and gender.
• FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd said, “The Opioid Tracker sheds light on multiple aspects of opioid abuse and dependence, including utilization, costs, age and gender. We hope that the Opioid Tracker will be useful to all health care stakeholders, such as policymakers, payers, providers, patients and researchers, as they continue to track and seek to better understand and address this public health issue.”
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