Where the work comp world is heading – Part 1

Big changes are in store for work comp, changes brought on by a much-altered economy, health reform, technological leaps, health care provider behavior, governmental influences, budgetary shifts, and demographics.
Driving home from RIMS yesterday, I was struggling to come up with a way of explaining what’s coming in a way that captured where we are today and what the next few years will look like. Fried after three days of nonstop meetings, I flipped on the stereo and there was the answer.
I’d been listening to a book-on-CD entitled ‘1421, The Year China Discovered the World’ by Gavin Menzies. An amazing read (or more properly listen), Menzies spent years reconstructing data from sources around the world, data that build a compelling (and controversial) case for his contention that huge Chinese treasure fleets comprised of hundreds of massive ships circumnavigated the globe seventy years before Europeans got in their tiny ships to sail to the Americas.
According to Menzies, the Chinese built a huge treasure fleet, far more sophisticated and capable than anything the West could even contemplate, and set forth to chart the world’s oceans and continents. They knew a lot about navigation, but there were big gaps in that knowledge. They also had little information about what they would find as they sailed thousands of miles from their home waters.

Their ships, square-rigged and large beyond comprehension for the time, could only sail before the wind, thus they were forced to go where prevailing winds and currents took them. China’s admirals, many of whom were brilliant navigators and leaders, had some charts from previous expeditions and well-built ships designed specifically for years’ long voyages; but by the very nature of their task they were indeed venturing into uncharted waters.
The parallels are certainly clear.
Work comp payers and vendors can’t do what macro influences, the law and the markets don’t allow – at least not for long. We can trim our sails, keep a sharp lookout, carefully question those who have some knowledge about where we appear to be heading, and plan and practice what we’ll do as we come across new challenges and perils.
What we can’t do is stay in the harbor. Like it or not, we’re on the seas heading for places we know not.
Over the next few days I’ll draw more parallels (for nautically inclined readers, pun intended) and climb to the highest crow’s nest to peer ahead.
(Note – Menzies has been severely criticized for some of his methods and conclusions; nonetheless there is ample evidence that Chinese sailors made their way to Africa and many other destinations thousands of miles from their home ports)