ADJUSTED
ADJUSTED
Season 8 Wrap Up
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Season 8 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.
Season 8 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp.
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For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, Alabama, and with me today I have both my co-hosts, so we'll start with you, mike, just if you could go ahead and introduce yourself, and then we'll go to Matt.
Speaker 3Yeah, hello everybody. Mike Gilmartin with Key Risk and I am here in cold Greensboro, as I just shared Greg, it snowed like I mean, I can see everything, the grass is green, but the kids are off school today, so there's a little wrinkling there. North Carolina doesn't know what to do once we get snow and a tiny bit of ice, so here we are.
Speaker 2Well, down here it is cold but there's no snow. But if there is any snow or even a freeze, there's going to be an alert in Alabama and, fun fact, the year before I came there was an ice storm where people were literally trapped in the office for four days and they had to, like, walk to target and get pillows and blankets because nobody could drive home. So I missed out on that adventure, but I heard it was crazy, so we don't know how to deal with the cold at all down here.
Speaker 3Yeah, watching kids try and sled on grass was a comical this morning.
Speaker 2That's right, you, you, you lived in Illinois for a while and I was up in Michigan. So we've seen, we've seen real winners.
Speaker 3Yeah, I had 20 inches of snow on Superbowl Sunday in like 2014. And I was like, oh man, it's going to be awesome to have a go to work tomorrow morning and I woke up to like snow blowers and everybody getting themselves to work and I was like wait, what's happening here? Apparently, you go to work with 20 inches of snow in.
Speaker 2Illinois. That's exactly right. That's exactly right, Matt. How are things in your neck of the woods?
Speaker 1Well, hello, gentlemen. Yeah, this is Matthew Yaling. I'm with Midwest Employers, Casualty, and I'm joining you guys from St Louis, missouri. It's cold here. We have a little snow on the ground, but, yeah, school's definitely in session. We get a wintry mix every once in a while, so not that we can drive well in it, but it happens. We're a little more used to it than where you guys are.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's so hilly here that and there's just no plans If it does snow, they don't have the salt machines and the blowers and all of that. So I think I've lived here now, I guess, six years and I think we've had a dusting twice and it's melted off. So I timed this perfect. If I'd come like a year earlier, I would have been stuck in the office with everybody for that adventure. So well, like a year earlier, I would have been stuck in the office with everybody for that adventure. So well, great guys.
Speaker 2Well, I wanted to get us all together. We are wrapping up season eight, which is pretty amazing that we've gone over 100 episodes. So I always like to do a short wrap up session, especially this time of year, as we're wrapping up the year, to kind of talk through what stood out and what your favorite parts were. So this was a relatively short season because it was just really the fall that we kind of put together our episodes. So I thought I would just start really quick by kind of going through what we talked about. So we did a reboot, mike, on telemedicine with MedCall, and we had talked to MedCall oh, it'd probably been two, three years ago and felt like it was a time to update that. They've had some new folks over there and wanted to re -explore that topic a little bit. Mike, what stood out to you on that?
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean, I'm a big telemedicine fan and KeyRisk was one of the first Berkeley companies to work with MedCall it.
Speaker 3Just to me it's a couple of different things.
Speaker 3One, it's ease of use, right, so not having to sit in an ER, and the ability to talk to an ER trained physician, not only to kind of give you some pointers of what you should do with an injury, but maybe what you shouldn't do with an injury, which I think is a big one. But then the other one for me is kind of the employer's ability to show their employees that they care right With having this service, having it to touch your fingertips, be able to call somebody, get your claim reported right away and then talk to a doctor to make sure you feel good about what's going on and kind of give you some recommendations. I think that's big because a lot of times people get injured and it's the slog to the ER, the urgent care, and then it's four hours there and at that that point you're disconnected from your employer, not really sure what to do or where to go, and so I think the ease of use for the employee and the ability for them to be feel like they're cared for right away is a huge deal when it comes to telemedicine. What about you, greg?
Speaker 2Yeah no, I couldn't agree more, in fact, not from a work comp perspective, but just in my personal life. I am so busy. I've got like a thousand things going on in my life.
Speaker 3It's so nice to have.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, Like I had a and I knew exactly what it was. I had an ear infection. I just needed some drops, but I had no time to go to the doctor. I was doing a work comp conference, so I was literally able just to do it, get it called in, get my meds and and I think when we start thinking about our injured workers, it's a real asset to have that. And then you add in the fact that I think for carriers, just getting the claims reported is a big deal.
Speaker 2And getting them the right treatment right away is a big deal, so a lot of value there. And I think you see a lot in the industry where they're doing these nurse triages and I think there's a place for that. But I do think telemedicine, where you're talking to an ER physicians, really its own thing and stands outside of that. I don't know about you.
Speaker 3No, I agree, I think that makes it definitely different. I mean right, I mean telemedicine. At least when I first started using it. You kind of like going to the school nurse, like you didn't know what specialty a doctor you're going to get. It's like the ice pack for the stomachache thing all over again. So, yeah, I think it's good.
Speaker 3And then I, I agree, I think it's just the immediacy of it, right, like a lot of times we talk about in claims that injured workers really don't know what's going on, they don't understand the process, they don't know how things are going to work, and I think that's one tool to kind of help eliminate some of that, to say, hey, you can call this real quick, your claim on how he gets reported and adjusters going to reach out to you, and you can talk to a doctor all in the span of five, 10 minutes, which is just a huge deal compared to again going to an ER with a bunch of sick people and sitting around and waiting for your finger to be sewn back on. Right, I mean it's just. I guess if you have that, you're not calling telemedicine, but you know what I mean. It just it's a really cool tool. We've seen our utilization at KeyRest grow up year after year with our insureds.
Speaker 3I'm sure you guys have seen the same thing, but it just, it gets more and more used every year.
Speaker 2I agree, I agree. So definitely encourage people to check that one out. One thing our safety team has done here risk management safety team for a number of years has been an initiative to really push safety this time of year. We've called it our home safe for Holidays campaign and that's been really important because we think about this time of year. Really, we want to be with the people we care about. We want to be with the people in our lives, whether those are family members or friends, and this is a time of year where there's A lot of extra traffic on the roads, there's a lot of ice sometimes we were talking about snow and weather and so just highlighting the importance of safety this time of year something we've liked to do every year for the last three or four years so we have one of our safety folks on our episode for that to talk about that. Matt, what stood out to you as we talked about safety this year?
Speaker 1I think, as you mentioned, we all want to be home safe for the holidays.
Speaker 1When this airs, obviously we'll just have passed most of the holiday season and I think it's important, an important mindset, to know that we want to empower the staff and empower our employees to know that if there's an unsafe environment, if something going on, you know that they're empowered to stop production or stop whatever the activity might be to make sure the environment's safe.
Speaker 1So I think we get complacent and sometimes complacency even for the most seasoned workers, like they don't stop to do the right thing or they don't stop to do the safe thing. It's not laziness or confidence or something. It's just that you get complacent and you're working and you don't do that quick tie off because you're like, oh, I'm going to be doing this for 10 seconds or whatever. I don't need to do that I can get around this. So it's reminding folks let's continue to do the right thing, do the safety measure that you should be doing, and just continue this training and ingraining that within people's mindset of you know how do we want to act and how do we want to work environment that's safe and gets everybody home for the holiday. So you know, slow down, don't become complacent. And I think those were all important tips from the safety gentleman that we interviewed that day.
Speaker 2Absolutely the other thing. I'd add to that, matt, just thinking about safety in general. I don't know if it's this way for you or Mike, you want to chime in, but if you've been in claims for any number of years, you start to have a little PTSD, like I literally will try to open a package with a knife and then I'll think about wait a minute.
Speaker 2I've seen this injury before. Or I'll get the ladder out to do something, I'll be like I better have somebody hold this. I've seen somebody fall off of it, so I think it's almost worse for us sometimes because we've seen all the different ways people can get hurt and how many of those injuries could have been avoided if people just slowed down or taken some extra steps. I don't know if that ever happens to you All the time.
Speaker 1You don't want to live in a bubble, right, but you definitely see things happening and you're like, oh yeah, we need to change how we're doing this, especially a lot of people probably doing the Christmas lights this time of year and are you really securing that ladder? Is it an appropriate contact? You're putting it on the mulch or are you on a firm foundation? Oh yeah. So you see these things and it's like, hey, you know, my kids are up running on the ladder. I'm like, uh yeah, and I think I mentioned to you my oldest son. He used to ask oh, dad, tell me about an accident or tell me how that you know, tell me how that happened.
Workplace Safety and Appreciation for Efforts
Speaker 1You see a lot of strange things and not that we take it for granted, but you definitely want to be a you know not every situation ends in the terrible result, but we don't want to be complacent either that you know, because you got away with not clipping in for those 10 seconds, you were at that elevated height Like what? That 50th time that you didn't do it that resulted in the fall. So we don't want to see those falls. We want people to get home and enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas and whatever the holiday season that you're celebrating with your family and loved ones, and just important reminders for everybody to do the right thing, put safety as a mindset and be able to share those holidays with your loved ones.
Speaker 2Mike, you got. You got a little bit of the PTSD too.
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean I drove down my street the other day and my neighbor was on like a 30 foot ladder putting up Christmas lights, like by himself, and I was like god, man, like you, fall off that thing. You were so screwed. And then I'm getting a big backyard project done and this guy was holding a board with one hand and cutting it with a circular saw with the other hand and I'm like normally you'd have somebody else holding the board in a way like I, you know everything. I see I'm like oh, that's not a good idea, but what are you? I mean, I agree, we want everybody to be safe and I can't turn it off. Most of the time I watch my daughter play on the playground and I'm like don't climb up there. But I mean it's part of the job, I guess.
Speaker 2Yeah, safety is a big deal. I had a friend of mine at a previous employer. He always used to say shortcuts kill, and I really. You know we get complacent. We take some shortcuts because we're in a hurry or we've got pressure on us to complete something and then bad things happen. We also had the opportunity to celebrate our 100th episode. I'm just really proud.
Speaker 2In general, this is something that a lot of people put a lot of hours in. I think with 100 episodes, if you figure every episode's like half an hour to an hour long, you're talking about several days of content you could listen to 24 hours a day. That's a ton of work. It's a ton of work for you guys. So I certainly want to make sure again that I just thank our marketing team Cindy Gabe, who's in the background, jacob, who does a lot of the editing, mike Matt, the people who came before and put time and effort into this, and Claire and some of the others who've hosted at different times.
Speaker 2It takes a lot of people to make this and I think sometimes people don't realize like just a few 45 minute episode. There's so much work in planning it out, planning the questions, getting the right guests, editing it. So it seems like we just threw it up there and it's ready to go, but there's a lot involved, so super excited about that and I felt like we have made an impact. It's always hard to know who you're reaching, but I've had various people come to me at different conferences and just talk about how much they enjoy it. I know it's not all just them trying to blow my ego up.
Speaker 2I'm sure there's a little bit of that, but I think the biggest thing for me and I don't know about you guys is I feel like I've learned a lot, like I've learned things that I would never have learned any other way, and there are quotes and thoughts that have stuck with me across multiple years based on some of the conversations we've had. So I appreciate you guys, so definitely want to make sure I say that for the 100th episode. And then from there we went straight into thriving after limb loss and this was a. I mean this was a pretty in-depth interview where we really talked to somebody who'd been through a lot. Matt, what stood out to you in this one?
Inspiring Recovery and Community Support
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean anytime we get to hear the perspective of an injured employee and to have the kind of story I think it was. Am I wrong? Aaron Holmes, right, yes, I'm wrong, but yeah, so, aaron, the story that he told and hearing that perspective, and luckily he had just an amazing team around him. He talked a lot about forming that team and then, really like helping people after him to get resources and share the knowledge that his family and stuff developed. You know, just an amazing attitude, an amazing recovery and a result and just a great podcast to hear from his perspective. And I wanted to know more. Like, hey, you know, like tell us because you know you and I have been on this, the claim side of these claims for years and years. And like it's great to hear, like, hey, give us your perspective. You know it's not always good. And like let's not sugarcoat this. You know what, you know what went wrong. Like how do we become better advocates for the injured employee? How do we ensure that? You know, we're getting the best result for everybody?
Speaker 1And you know he gave a good summarization of the things that went well. He touched on a couple of things that you know could have gone better, but then just what really stood out to me, you know, is his attitude, and I think attitude drives a lot of the recovery for for injured employees, and when we can be positive and bring a good attitude, I think it helps. It helps the injured employees have a good attitude. And he just had an amazing attitude and just immediately like and I was trying to clarify this during the interview with him like when did this start evolving? And you start realizing, and it was almost immediate for him. It felt like he was almost literally a couple days or within the hospital and started talking about like well, here's the steps we need to take and start doing this stuff. So a great interview, great experience, hearing what's gone right, how we can do things better, and then the resources that he's developed with his own foundation an amazing success story.
Speaker 2Yeah, I just thought he was a fascinating person. Of course his accident happens while he's helping a coworker get a change of story. Yeah, I just thought he was a fascinating person. Of course his accident happens while he's helping a coworker get a change of tire. I mean, like this is the kind of guy who's just out doing good and, you know, gets hit by a car in the process. And when he was going through that story, I agree with you.
Speaker 2The things that really stood out to me was one his attitude and his mindset throughout that entire experience, which I think could get pretty dark. I haven't walked in that path, but I would think losing limbs like that would be a hard thing to go through. And then the support system he had around him, where he had family members and neighbors and coworkers and really the whole community helping come together to help him get better, and an employer that was excited to have him back and was supportive. And I think we can learn a lot from that If we think about our injured workers. Two of those things.
Speaker 2We can't necessarily control the mindset of our injured workers, but we can do things to support a positive mindset and we can certainly work with our employers to make sure that we have that support system, the best that we can do to help them recover and just an impressive person overall, so was glad to hear his story and how he's impacting people who are now going through what he's been through very, very cool yeah, and his foundation was I believe it's wiggle your toes, right yes, the story of like you know, and he's working still like not just the foundation, but he's actually working for a prosthetic manufacturer, probably the world's largest or one of the world's largest manufacturers, and being able to be like an example of, hey, this is how we're using these knees.
Speaker 1And he talked about the latest and greatest devices that he was using, but not everyone always needs that technology and he even mentioned a little bit of that.
Speaker 1Oh, you wouldn't start here. You know, we asked about you know that progression and he progressed actually pretty quickly and he admitted that through, through that. He's like, oh, they were telling me you know months and within he was saying, you know is less than weeks that he was past the stubbies and on to a more advanced sea leg and all that other fun stuff. But I just kept thinking and and I didn't say I don't think I said it on that podcast, but it was like the Lieutenant Dan magic legs, like I wanted to make that comment, but I was I was also trying to be like, oh gosh, he probably hears this from stupid people like me all the time. So, but no, just a great story and how he continues to pay it forward and use the knowledge that him and his family have learned to continue to help other people and injured employees, injured service people injured, you know. However, you became an amputee, you know, and this stuff he's done is just amazing.
Creating a Vision for the Future
Speaker 2Well, I just appreciate again I know I've already said this how much you guys both have done and all the other people who've put time in to do this. We all have full-time jobs that are busy, and this is sort of just a side thing that we fit in where we can make it work. So I want to make sure I thank everybody for that Also. Just it's that time of year. I always ask others what they're grateful for, and I felt like I should turn the tables on myself a little bit here. So, as we wrap up this year, I'm extremely grateful for so many things such amazing people in my life friends, family, children, coworkers and I think that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2What's the legacy we're going to leave, and I hope that, as we think about next year, we think about who we want to be in 2025, what we want our communities to look like, what we want our world to look like, what we want our office to look like and how we do that as human beings, and so certainly grateful for those things in my own life and wish everybody a happy new year as we go into the next year and remind people to do right, think differently and don't forget to care and we'll continue to release these every two weeks on Monday. Hope you guys will continue to follow along. We definitely appreciate it too, if you have time to leave us a review. We have some of those on our Apple Spotify. Those types of things it's always good to do. That Helps us get the message out about the podcast. So appreciate all your support and we'll see you in 2025.