**Office of Workman's Compensation Programs (OWCP)**

**Training for Managers and Supervisors**

**BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**May 7, 1997**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, \"OWCP and
You,\" an Interactive Seminar for BLM Managers and Supervisors on
Safety, Workers\' Compensation And BLM\'s Back‑to‑work Policy. And Now
the Host of Your Program, Carolyn Burrell.

Burrell: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to Our Satellite Workshop on
the Federal Workers\' Compensation Program or OWCP, And BLM\'s New
Back‑to‑work Policy. The Men and Women Who Work for The Bureau of Land
Management Are its Most Vital Resource. Our Individual and Collective
Skills Allow the Bureau to Accomplish its Mission. We Are Fewer in
Number than in Past Years. Our Challenge Is to Offset this Fact by Being
Ever More Productive. Many More Measures Can Contribute to Higher per
Worker Productivity. One of These Measures Is Simply To Keep Employees
Safe in the Workplace So They Can Do Their Jobs Without an Interrupting
Injury. When Lost Time Accidents Do Occur, as They Inevitably Will,
Those Who Are Injured Need to Return to Work as Soon as Possible. Let\'s
Look at Those Thoughts as An Objective for Today\'s Training. The
Objective of this Training Is to Reinforce the Critical Importance of
Preventing Accidents in the Workplace. Also How to Deal with
Work‑related Injuries That Occur. Investigations. , Employee Assistance
and Getting Injured Employees Back To Work as Quickly as Possible.
Joining Me for Our First Segment Today to Talk about Safety in The
Workplace Is Yogi Neilsen From Our BLM\'s Alaska State Office. He Is the
Safety Manager There. Welcome, Yogi.

Nielsen: It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here Carolyn. I Think We Have Some Real
Good Information to Pass onto the Folks Today.

Burrell: I Am Sure We Do. How Is the Weather in Alaska These Day?

Nielsen: Not Nearly as Hot as It Is Here in Phoenix.

Burrell: but You Are Adjusting to the Heat in Phoenix?

Nielsen: I Hope So.

Burrell: from the Department Of Labor We Have Ralph Slighter Here as
Well. Ralph Is a Technical Advisor to The Office of Workers\'
Compensation at the Department Of Labor, and He Is Here from Washington,
D.c.. Welcome, Ralph.

Slighter: Thank You. I Am Glad to Be Here, Too. I Have a Little Bit
Different Perspective from the Department Of Labor Standpoint but I
Think We Have a Lot of Good Things to Share Both from Our Perspective
And from BLM\'s as Well.

Burrell: Thank You. We Really Look Forward to Hearing the Department of
Labor\'s Perspective Today. Also Joining Us Today Is the Director of
BLM\'s National Human Resources Management Center, Linda Sedbrook, Who
Has Joined Our Panel. Welcome, Linda.

Sedbrook: Thank You, Carolyn. We Have Worked Real Hard to Get To this
Day. I Am Delighted to Be Here.

Burrell: Thank You So Much. I Look Forward to Working with All of You
Today. Our Training Today Will Be Presented in Two Segments with One
15‑minute Break. There Is a Course Outline Included with Your Written
Materials. Before We Begin Our Discussion, I Would like to Mention That
Throughout this Program You Will Be Able to Communicate with Us Via
Telephone and Fax. Using the Numbers Provided to Your Offices. You Can
Send Us a Fax Question At Any Time. Use the Form Provided with Your
Viewer Packet. Please Print Your Question with A Dark Marker and Be Sure
to Include the Phone Number in Your Viewing Room in Case We Want to Get
Back with You on the Air Today. You May Call Us Whenever You Like. Our
Operators Are Standing By. In Most Cases, However, We Will Only Be
Putting Calls on the Air During Our Scheduled Interactive Segments. If
We Don\'t Have the Time to Answer Your Question on the Air Today, Our
Subject Matter Experts Will Get Back to You After the Show. You Should
All Have a Copy of The Workbook for the Workshop Which Was Sent to Your
Offices. You May Want to Refer to it Throughout Our Program. You Will
Also Soon Be Receiving A Copy of BLM\'s OWCP Guidebook. Keep an Eye out
for It. To Kick Things Off, We Have with Us Today BLM\'s Deputy
Director, Mat Millenbach, Who Has Prepared A Few Remarks about BLM\'s
Safety And OWCP Policy and Helping Injured Employees Return to Work.

Millenbach: When Time Is Lost On Investigations, Paper Work, Recruiting
a Replacement and So Forth. The Injury May Also Have a Significant
Monetary Cost to the BLM. In Recent Years Our Documented Injury‑related
Costs Have Averaged about \$5.5 Million per Year. We Have to Get Better
at Preventing Accidents, Getting Injured Workers Back to Work, And
Reducing Injure‑related Costs. You Managers and Supervisors Are The Keys
to Achieving this. In Doing an Effective Job of Preventing Accidents and
Minimizing the Impacts of Accidents That Do Occur, You Will Maximize the
Use of Our Human Resources. We Hope this Training Session Will Help You
to Succeed. Thank You.

Burrell: We Appreciate Mat Sharing His Thoughts with Us. As You Can See,
BLM Top Leadership Is Committed to Reducing Our OWCP Costs and Helping
Injured Employees Return To Work. However, You Are Key to Making This
Work. Now, Yogi, What about the Role That Safety Plays in on the Job
Injuries?

Nielsen: Carolyn, Safety Plays a Very Important Part in Reducing on the
Job Injuries. When We Are Through with this Discussion, You as BLM
Supervisors and Managers Will Understand Your Responsibilities In
Assisting Employees to Prevent Accidents and What Your Safety
Responsibilities Are When An Accident Occurs. First, I Would like to Go
over BLM\'s Strategic Safety Action Plan. About Five Years Ago the
Bureau Realized That a New Approach to Safety Was Needed If We Were Ever
Going to Reduce the Cost of Workers\' Compensation Claims. In the past
We Have Been Reacting to Individual Accidents In a Variety of Ways with
Not Much Uniformity Throughout the Bureau. We Had a Safety Management
Information System That Was Cumbersome and Required Many Steps and Lots
of Training to Enter Accident Information and Even More Training and
Expertise To Get Information Back out of It. In Order to Effect a Change
and Overhaul this Largely Inefficient Approach, the Bureau Convened a
Meeting of Managers, Supervisors and Employees to Develop a New
Direction and the Strategic Safety Action Plan Was Conceived. The Safety
Strategic Action Plan Was Signed by the Bureau, Bureau\'s Designated
Safety Health Official in 1994. It Emphasized a New Approach and
Direction for Safety by Adapting ‑‑ by Adopting Several Major Innovative
Strategies Improving The Safety Program Focusing on Prevention. Some of
These Are Making Safety An Integral and Stated Part of The Work Process.
Analyzing Every Task for Hazardous Components and Agreed Upon Ways of
Lessening or Mitigating Them. This Is Called a Job Hazard Analysis, and
Supervisors and Employees Need to Write Them Together. A Sample Is
Included in Your Packet. Investigating All Accidents to Ensure
Corrective Action Is Taken and Accurate Information Is Entered into the
Safety Management Information System. Making the Safety Management
Information System Easy to Use And Easy to Retrieve Reports, Trends and
Costs. Ensuring That When Accidents Do Happen We Fix the Process Rather
Than Fixing the Blame. Along with These Strategies the Bureau Also
Adopted a Zero Tolerance Policy for Accidents. That Is to Say the
Ultimate Goal Is That Preventable Accidents or Injuries Are
Unacceptable. This Is Easier Said than Done, And Many Questions Arise
with Decrease ‑‑ with the Decreasing Staff and Increasing Span of
Control, How Do I Find Time to Analyze Hazards, Write Them down And
State for the Record How We\'re Going to Avoid Them? My Projects Will
Never Get Done If I\'m Busy Always Doing Safety. We Answer this Concern
in Several Ways: First of All, it Must Be Understood That the Safety of
Our Employees as Well As the Visiting Public Is the Primary
Responsibility of Every Federal Worker. We\'ll Not Accept Needless Risk
To Accomplish a Mission. However, We Do Have Important Work That must Be
Done, and There Are Inherent Risks Involved. We Handle These Risks
Through The Job Hazard Analysis. We Know That Accidents Will Happen. We
Also Believe That a Zero Accident Tolerance Policy Is Achievable. Having
a Zero Accident Policy Means That We Will Manage Our Programs Both in
Planning and Actual Operations in Such a Way As to Address All Foreseen
Hazards and Hazard Potential. We\'ll Also Strive to Anticipate
Unforeseen Problems and Ways to Mitigate Them as They Develop. We\'ll ‑‑
We\'ll Document Those Hazards and We\'ll Mitigate Those Hazards as Best
We Can and Document Our Mitigation Efforts. This Is a Process. If an
Accident Occurs, We\'ll Analyze it and Adjust the Process. We Cannot
Accept the Idea That Accidents Are Just a Part of Doing Business. We
Also Answer That the Bureau Is Paying Us to Include Safety As a Viable
Part of Every Job or Task. If That Means a Documented Discussion of New
Hazards to Face Each Day, or Each Task, or Just a Reminder of Those
Things That Shout \"Watch Out\" and a Five‑minute Tailgate Safety
Session, We Are Being Paid to Document this in Our Field Notes, Project
Log or Camp Log. How Else Can We Fix a Process If We Don\'t Know What
Came Before The Accident or Might Have Been Omitted from the Planning?
As Supervisors, Team Leaders and Project Leaders, You Are Really The Key
Players in Accident Prevention in at Least Five Major Ways. You must
Accept the Responsibility for Safety and Set the Example and Demand
Nothing less from Your Employees. Since You Usually Have the Most
Experience in Knowing How to Perform Work Tasks Safely and Efficiently,
You must Be a Role Model in Setting a Safety Example. You Have the
Responsibility to Analyze the Task and the Workplace for Any Hazards
That Might Be Present. And You must Take Appropriate Steps to Mitigate
Them. You Have the Responsibility to Train Your Employees or Co‑workers
in the Correct and That Means Safe Task Steps. You must Also See
They\'re Equipped and Trained in the Use Of Any Required Personal
Protective Equipment. You May Have to Initiate and Often Perform
Accident Investigations and must Put That Information into the Safety
Management Information System Now Found on the Internet. When We Say
That You Are Responsible for Accident Investigation and All Accidents
Need to Be Investigated, What Do We Mean? In a Serious Accident or Any
With a Fatality the Process Is Clear and Stated in Chapter 7 of The
Bureau Safety Manual. In All Accidents, the Primary Goal Is the Care and
Treatment Of Our Employees. But While That Is Being Done, Consideration
must Be Given to Gathering the Pertinent Information Leading to and
Resulting in the Accident. Depending on the Severity and Complexity of
the Accident, the Investigation Can Consist of a Statement by the
Employee in a Properly Input Di‑134 in the Safety Management Information
System to a Full Team of Specialty Experts Interviewing Many Witnesses
and Reconstructing All Aspects of The Accident Claim. Ordinarily a
Statement of the Involved Employee and Witness Statements When
Appropriate and Input from Mechanics or Other Experts Is Enough to
Properly Complete the Safety Management Information System or Smis
Report. Safety Managers and Co‑laterals Can Help with this Effort. Now
Let\'s Talk about Information Gathering. In the past We Have Used Form
Di‑134 to Capture the Facts of An Accident this. Form Comes with an
Instruction Sheet That Tells You How to Change the Facts of an Accident
Into Numeric Codes Reflecting The Cause and Results of an Accident. A
Copy of the Di‑134 and Instructions Are Included in Your Packet. We Can
Still Use this Form to Gather Information to Put the Accident on the
Internet, but There Will Be More Options to More Completely Understand
and Express More Fully the Facts of The Accident. Now I Would like to
Show You a Tape That We Made Earlier That Illustrates Accessing the
Internet and Entering an Accident. Now Let\'s Take a Look at this Smis
Program. First, Get on the Internet and Enter: Www.smis.doi.gov in the
Location Box. This Address Is in Your Handout. It Will Bring up Smis,
the Safety Management Information System. We\'re Using a Unix Format and
it May Appear Slightly Different If You Are Using a Pc. Let\'s Click on
the Beta Site. Note That this Is Now under Construction. It Will Be
Fully Functioning When You Enter Your Accident. Click the Mouse on
\"Report an Accident.\" A Message Will Come up Warning You about
Security. Just Click Your Mouse on Continue Whenever You See this. The
Program Will Then Ask You to Enter Your Last Name and Your Department of
Interior User Validation. At this Time the User Validation Is Now Your
Social Security Number. If You Were a Supervisor or an Authorized Lead,
the Program Will Accept You and You Can Continue On. Before Doing So,
However, I Would Suggest Clicking Your Mouse on \"View Helpful
Information\" and Read it Carefully. Now That the Log‑in Information Is
Complete, Click Mouse on Log‑in. Now Click on \"Enter a New Report\" for
a New Incident. You\'re Now Ready to Input Your Data. Look at the
Information They Want and the Spaces They Want it In. Click First on the
Underlined \"I\" in Parentheses and We Will See How the Program Wants
the Information Entered. When We Click on the \"Back\" Button, it Will
Return Us to the Report. Scroll down and Side Ways If You Need to See
and Access All the Fields. Click Your Mouse on the Various Fields to
Move Through Them. The Narrative and Place of Incident Need to Be
Carefully And Completely Filled out. The Pulldown Menus Assist You in
Filling in the Blanks. Just Click on the Ones That You Want and They
Will Appear in the Proper Field. When You Have Finished Entering This
Preliminary Information, You\'ll Want to Click Your Mouse On \"Send this
Info.\" If You Made a Mistake or Are Missing Any of the Fields, the
Program Will Direct You to Go Back and Do it Correctly. Here Is a Report
I Have Completed Earlier. Just Click on \"Send this Info.\" After the
Program Accepts It, a New Screen Will Come up Asking For the Victim\'s
Social Security Number. Enter this Information and Then Click the Mouse
on \"Submit Victim I.d.\" As You Fill in the Particulars Of the Injury,
Select from the Pull‑down Menus Those Items That Best Describes the
Outcome of The Situation. Remember to Scroll These Menus Or Click on
\"More\" for Additional Choices. Now Let\'s Look at Two of the Fields,
\"Cause\" and \"Source.\" In Our Report the Victim Hit His Head on the
Desk. It Was a Slippery Floor That Caused it N this Situation We Would
Select \"Fall Slip on Floor Work Surface\" for the Cause. While
Selecting \"Furniture, Furnishings, Office Equipment\" As the Source of
the Head Injuries. When You Finish this Section You Will Again Need to
Send this Information. If All the Blanks Have Been Properly Selected You
Will Be Asked If You Want to Send in More Information on Injuries to
Multiple Victims. Just Move Carefully Through the Program According to
Your Needs. Then Click on \"Done\" and the Program Will Congratulate
You. Now You Know How to Use the Smis. Instructions for Smis Are
Included in Your Viewer Packet. Smis Is a Very User‑friendly Intuitive
System. It Can Be Queried in Many Ways To Provide Managers with
Important Information Such as The Accident Frequency Rate for Any State,
Division or Subgroup, The Most Common Type of Injury Within Any Group.
Top 2 the Costliest Injuries Within in Any Group and the Occupation Code
with the Most Injury and What They Are. When, Where, How and What Time
Of the Day Accidents Are Happening. The Accident Trends Suggesting Where
Prevention Efforts Should Be Made and Much More Detailed Information
That Managers Need To Accurately Target Accident Prevention Efforts.
Your Efforts in Accurately Gathering Accident Information And Care When
Inputting Data Are Key to the Bureau\'s Ability to Identify Work
Processes That Need Attention or Fixing. While There Are Many Osha
Regulations You must Be Aware of While Being a Supervisor, There Are
Also a Number of Resources At Your Disposal to Assist You In Completing
Your Safety Responsibility. Besides the Many Common‑sense Safety Hazards
You and Your Employees must Discuss When Developing a Jab Hazard
Analysis, Osha Insists We Meet Certain Standards Such as the Confined
Space Standard, the Blood Borne Pathogen Standard, The Personal
Protective Equipment Standard. The Lockout, Tagout Hazardous Energy
Standard and Various Other Standards. These Are Important Because BLM
People Have Been Seriously Injured and Died as a Result of Not
Practicing the Correct Procedures While Engaging in Related Activities.
Safety Managers, Safety Specialists and Hrm Specialists Can All Assist
the Supervisor in Accomplishing Their Safety Responsibilities. We Can
Arrange or Help Arrange Required Training, Assist in the Accurate
Investigation and Subsequent Completion of the Accident Report, Show You
How to Access the Accident Input Page On the Internet and How to Access
Other Safety Topics. We Can Help in the Process of Accurate Job Hazard
Analysis, Assist in the Overall Evaluation Of the Supervisor\'s Program
to Ensure Compliance under the Law. Provide Technical Assistance as
Requested with Your ‑‑ as Requested. With Your Timely and Accurate
Efforts in These Areas We Will Be Able to Reduce the Risks to Where
Employees as Well as Assist Management in the Reduction of OWCP Costs.

Burrell: Yogi, We Can Never Emphasize Safety Enough. Of All the Tools
That You\'ve Just Talked About, Which Ones Do You Think Are the Most
Important For Managers and Supervisors?

Nielsen: Well, of Those We\'ve Talked About, the Job Hazard Analysis
Where the Supervisor And Employees Sit down and Talk Over Those Things,
They Can Use That Document That ‑‑ It\'s Very Important. The Safety
Management Information System That Helps Managers Take a Real Hard Look
At Where the Accidents Are Happening Is an Excellent Tool Also.

Burrell: Okay. So Those Two?

Nielsen: Yes.

Burrell: Thank You Very Much. Now We Would like to Shift Our Focus to
the OWCP Procedures You Must Use to Handle a Work‑related Injury. Each
Case Should Follow a Pattern of Interaction among the Supervisor, the
Employee, Medical Providers and Personnel Staff. Now Ralph and Linda
Will Give Us An Overview of the Responsibilities of the Department of
Labor and BLM\'s Role in Ensuring That Each Case Is Handled Properly.
Ralph, We\'re Going to Begin with You.

Slighter: Thank You. You Have Heard over the Last Several Minutes about
Each One Of the Different Focuses and Safety Regarding the Role in
Job‑related Injuries. What I Am Going to Be Discussing Over the next Few
Minutes, and Linda Will as Well, Will Be the Role of the Department of
Labor And the Role of BLM in this Entire of Safety Process. We at the
Department of Labor Do, Indeed, Have a Role. It\'s a Role That Comes
Later on Down the Road. We Get Involved after an Injury Has Occurred.
But We Do Have the Final Decision‑making Authority on Any Claim for
Benefits, Wage Loss, Medical Expenses and So Forth, That Comes In. So
Quite Clearly We Have a Role As Well. What I Want to Talk to You about
Is the Area of Different Levels Of Responsibilities Because There Are
Certain Individuals Who Have Certain Levels of Responsibility When an
Injury Has Occurred. Quite Clearly, We at the Department of Labor Have
That Responsibility, Agencies Have Responsibilities and So Forth. We\'re
Going to Talk a Little Bit About the Area of Responsibility. Secondly,
We\'re Going to Talk About the Different Level of Benefits That Are
Payable and The Coverage Requirements for Those Benefits. Not Everything
That Happens on The Job Is Covered. There Are Some Things That Happen
While You\'re Working That Will Not Be Covered under Workers\'
Compensation. I Want to Summarize Some of Those as Well for You. Third,
I Want to Talk about the Procedures That Are Involved When an Employee
Is Injured. Those Procedures Clearly Involve Such Things as Forms, but
They Involve Other Things as Well. What Does the Employee Do? Where Does
the Employee Go To? What Does the Supervisor Do and Where Does the
Supervisor Go To? These Are Procedures We Will Go Over in the next
Several Minutes And What Those Different Areas Of Responsibilities Are,
What The Procedures Are, What the Coverage and the Benefits Are. First
of All, However, I Am Going to Talk about the Area of Responsibility.
There Are Different Parties, the Employee, Supervisor, the Medical
Provider, the Agency, The Department of Labor, All Which Have Different
Levels of Responsibility. Briefly We\'re Going to Talk About the
Employee\'s Responsibility Because They Have To Initially Report the
Injury, But Then We\'re Going to Go into The Agency\'s Responsibility
and Then Come Back and Talk about Our Responsibility and Other
Physicians and So Forth. For That Discussion on the Area Of the
Supervisor Responsibility I Am Going to Briefly Turn it Over to Linda
Because She Is Going to Talk about BLM\'s Role In the Injury
Compensation Process.

Sedbrook: the Only Addition I Have Right Here, Ralph, Is the Fact That
it Is Very Important For All of You Supervisors That Are out There
Watching this Broadcast Today to Understand That You Are a Very Key
Element In All of this. We Are ‑‑ All of Us, the Specialists, the
Experts at Department of Labor, We Look to The Supervisors. The
Supervisors Are the People Who Know the Employee, They Know The Work
That They Are Performing, and So Just to Remind You That ‑‑ as We Go
Through All of This, Keep in Your Minds Just How Important Your Role Is
in All of this. Ralph?

Slighter: Okay. The Initial Role When an Injury Occurs Is Involved with
the Supervisors ‑‑ Excuse Me, the Employees, Because the Employees
Initially Have to Tell Someone At Their Agency, Usually That\'s The
Supervisor, That an Injury Has Occurred. You Are Supervisors Aren\'t
Going To Go out to the Employees and Say, Who Had an Injury Today?
Clearly They First Need to Report to You an Injury. That May Be Several
Different Mechanism. It May Be Verbal, May Have a Co‑worker Tell You
That Someone Is Lying on the Floor, They May Tell You about it in
Writing. This Is All the Employee\'s Responsibility. But Once That
Occurs, the next Area of Responsibility Is That Of the Supervisors, and
the First Role of the Supervisor Is To Ensure the Employee Receives
Prompt, Proper, Immediate Medical Treatment. One Thing You Want to Avoid
When You Hear about the Forms Is You Have an Employee Who Tells You
About an Injury, He Is Lie Lying On the Floor and You Don\'t Hand Him
the Forms at That Time and Say You Better Fill These out Before You Go
Any Further. You Make Sure the Employee Has The Opportunity to Avail
Himself Or Herself of Medical Treatment. Now, Some of That May Be Very
Minor. You May, for Example, Just Need To Put a Band‑aid on or Send the
Employee at to the Health Clinic To Lay down for a Few Minutes. It May
Be More Severe. He May Have to Be Med‑evac\'d. You Want to Make Sure
That the Employee Is Taken Care Of. He Has a Choice of Doctors, but In
Some Injuries You May Have to Send Them to the Closest Hospital. They
Can Choose Their Own Doctor Later On. But Clearly the Initial
Responsibility of the Supervisor Is to Ensure the Employee Can Receive
Prompt, Proper, Immediate Medical Treatment. In Fact, There Is a Form
That\'s Used for That and We Will Talk About That a Little Later On.
After That Point, Once You Have Ensured That the Medical Treatment Has
Been Taken Care Of, Then You\'re Going to Have to Worry about the
Agency\'s Responsibility. Yogi Talked to You about the Area about Safety
Responsibility. Clearly in the Investigation That ‑‑ Should Be Coming
Fairly Soon after the Injury. You May Still Have Some of the Evidence of
the Accident That\'s Right There at the Site of the Injury. You Want to
Start That as Soon As Possible. You Want to Alert Other Individuals at
Your Agency, Safety Manager, Personnel Specialist, Your OWCP
Coordinator. You Want to Let Them Know. And You Have to Start the Paper
Work. Sometime the Paper Work May Be The Di‑134 and in Some Cases it May
Be a Notice of Injury Form. The Notice of Injury Form Is a Ca‑1 and We
Will Talk about in That a Lot More Detail Later On. It May Be That it
Never Goes Beyond Your Doors. The Only Injuries That Are Submitted to Us
at the Department of Labor Are Those That Involve Lost Time or Medical
Expense. If You Have a Minor Injury and The Employee Just Wants to
Document this Possibly in Case He or She Has Future Problems, He Fills
out the Front of It, Gives it to You, You Fill out The Back and it Never
Gets Submitted to Us at the Department of Labor. But When That Gets
Given to You As a Supervisor, Clearly You Have a Responsibility for
Making Sure That That Form, the Ca‑1, Gets Filled out Quickly, Promptly
and Completely. We Have Several Different Procedures That Don\'t Even
Kick In until That Form Is Initiated And Sent to Us. One of Them Clearly
Is the Medical of Bill. We Can\'t Pay a Bill Without a Claim. We Have a
Procedure Called Nurse Intervention That Doesn\'t Kick In until We Get a
Claim and Get A Chance to Make a Decision on That Claim. So Clearly Once
the Employee Files a Claim with You, He Notifies You in Writing an
Injury Has Occurred, You Haven\'t Responsibility ‑‑ You Have
Responsibility to Complete That Notice of Injury Form. You May Have
Other Internal Procedures as Well. We Are Going to Talk about the
Concept of Light Duty Offers Later on and You May Want to Start Looking
Around for That Possibility If You Haven\'t Already Done So. But These
Are the Initial Areas Of Supervisor Responsibility, Prompt, Proper,
Immediate Medical Treatment, Notifying Others Within the Agencies of The
Injury, and Filling out the Necessary Paper Work. Before I Go Further I
Will Turn The Program Back over to Carolyn.

Burrell: Ralph, I Have a Question, What Happens If the Supervisor Does
Not Completely Fill out the Notice of Injury Form?

Slighter: If the Employee Doesn\'t Fill out the ‑‑ If the Supervisor
Doesn\'t Fill out the Notice of Injury Form, Generally The ‑‑ Within BLM
at Least the Form Will next Go to the OWCP Coordinator and They\'re
Going to Go Back to the Supervisor and Say You Have to Fill out this
Box, You Forgot to Fill out Box 37 or Whatever it Is. The Supervisor Is
the One That Has the Most Intimate Knowledge Of How the Injury Occurred,
the Circumstances. It May Be in Some Cases the Supervisor Can\'t Do It.
They May Be on a Leave. You May Have an Acting Supervisor. That\'s Fine.
Within BLM the Process Is That The OWCP Coordinator Will Send That Back
to the Agency. We Have Said for Example, the Department of Labor, If We
Get a Incompletely Filled out Ca‑1 We Will Send it Back to the Agency.
Under Those Circumstances, Chances Are That\'s Going to Result in
Significant Delays in Payment of Benefits. So in That Specific Case,
Clearly What You Want to Do Is Make Sure That the Employee ‑‑ Excuse Me
‑‑ Make Sure the Supervisor Fills it out from the OWCP Coordinator Side
Because in That Case We Might Send it Back If it Comes to Us.

Burrell: I Also Understand These Forms Can Be Submitted via The
Internet. What Happens If a Supervisor Does Not Have Access to the
Internet?

Slighter: Well, We Are Indeed Developing Procedures to Allow Submission
of Data Through the Internet. We Don\'t Accept Claims Directly Right
Now. We Hope to Be at That Stage. Internally Within Interior You Have
Those Types of Form. If You Don\'t Have Access to the Internet, Clearly
You Will Fall Into the Realm of Most Agencies Which Also Are Submitting
Forms Manually. That\'s Not a Problem with Us. Eventually We Would like
to Accept as Many as Possible Through the Internet but Most All of Them
Now Come Through Manual Submission and That\'s Fine with Us.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. I Would like to Take a Minute And Mention to
Our Downlink Sites We Will Be Going to the Phones in a Few Minutes for
Our First Question and Answer Period. So If You Have a Question or a
Comment for Ralph, Linda or Yogi About Anything They\'ve Covered So Far,
Please Give Us a Call or Send Us a Fax. Remember, in Order to Avoid an
Echo Effect When You Call, Stand Away from Your Tv or Turn down The
Volume. Don\'t Get Frustrated If You End Up on Hold for a While. We\'ll
Get to You as Fast as We Can. Linda?

Sedbrook: I Would Just like To Explain a Term That Ralph Has Been Using,
and That\'s OWCP Coordinator. You Know How We Frequently Complicate
Things in the Bureau. I Thought That I Knew Where the OWCP Coordinator
Was Located in The Bureau When I Started out Working on this Project.
However, the Reality Is That it Will Vary from Office to Office. So
Normally an OWCP Coordinator Will Either Reside in the Human Resources
Office or in Your Safety Office, and You Will Have To Find out Just
Where That Person Is. That Person Will Help You with All of the Forms
and ‑‑ All of The Things That Ralph Is Talking To You about Today. So
Find out Where Your OWCP Coordinator Resides. Back to You, Ralph.

Slighter: Thank You. You\'ve Already Heard a Little Bit about the Role
of Different Individuals Regarding Responsibilities. A Brief One on the
Employee, the Major One in the Area of the Agency. What I Want to Do Is
Talk to You About the Area of Responsibilities for a Couple Other
Parties. The First One I\'m Going to Talk About Is Medical Providers,
the Doctors, the Physicians in the Case Clearly Have Certain
Responsibilities. One of Them Is Primarily, in Fact, the Area of
Submission of Medical Reports and Doctors Are Pretty Much Familiar with
That. They Know That If They Want a Medical Bill to Be Paid, and They
Mostly Do, They Are Going To Be Submit a Medical Report to Us. Clearly,
There Needs to Be Some Communication Between the Doctor And the Agency.
A Doctor Who Sees a Patient and The Patient Tells the Doctor My Job
Requires Me to Lift up to 50 Pounds, but You Know That this Individual
Is a Program Analyst Who Never Has to Lift More than 20, We Have a
Failure to Communicate There and Clearly There Needs to Be Some
Communication Between the Agency And the Physician Regarding What The
Limitations Are of the Individual Employee. We\'re Going to Talk about
Someways That You Can Use to Make That Communication Easier. But Medical
Providers Have a Responsibility to Notify the Agency of Their Findings
as Well. We Are Going to Talk Considerably Later on about the Concept of
Light‑duty Offers but You Can\'t Make an Offer of Light Duty If You
Don\'t Know from the Doctor What the Limitations of The Employee Are in
the First Place. Clearly There Are Areas That Responsibility That
Pertain to The Medical Provider and That\'s Probably Something That
Needs to Be Communicated to the Employee As Well, Either Through the
Handout That You Provide to Him Or Through Verbal Communications.
There\'s Also a Final Area of Responsibility and That\'s OWCP, But
Before I Do That, I Am Going To Turn the Program Back over to Carolyn.

Burrell: Thank You, Ralph. At this Point We\'re Ready to Respond to Some
of the Faxes That We\'ve Received from the States. We Received a
Question from Nancy Wisely and Ralph Hept from Alaska. They Both
Submitted the Same Question and this Is for Yogi. I Am Concerned about
Putting My Social Security Number on the Internet When Filling out the
Di‑134. What Safeguards Are There?

Nielsen: as I Understand it From My Irm Folks That There Is An
Encryption Process Being Installed in the Different States to Make Sure
That When The Social Security Goes Out, Then Obviously ‑‑ Then a Whole
Bunch of the Information Is Put On the Form That They Are Going To
Require. Now, I\'m Not Real Sure When That\'s Going to Be Done in All
The States, but There\'s Also Something in the Federal Register That
Discusses this Type of Information, and I Have Been Assured by the Doi
Folks That Have Set up the Program That this Isn\'t Going to Be a
Problem, and it Won\'t Be ‑‑ Nobody Will Be Able to Access That
Information or Get That Social Security Number. Now, this ‑‑ You Know,
this Is The Promise That They Have Provided and with the Wizardry Of
Technology, I Hope That Works Out. Carolyn?

Burrell: We Hope That Answers Your Questions. Thank You. We Have a Fax
in from Doug Filer In Oregon. In Reference to Vehicle Accident
Investigations, Does the BLM Provide or Require the Type of Accident
Investigation Training That Will Satisfy the Courts And/or Insurance
Companies? If Not, We Are Placing Our Employees at Risk for Lawsuits.
Collecting Evidence and Making Determinations of Fault Is a Very
Specialized Skill That Usually Is Conducted Only by Trained Law
Enforcement Officers.

Nielsen: I Can Speak to That A Little Bit, I Think. One of the Types of
Training That We Do Have That We Have Just Got Through Putting on and
Making Available to All the States ‑‑ Now, Some of Them Haven\'t Availed
Themselves of it Yet ‑‑ but the Accident Reconstruction. If There Is a
Serious Accident, Obviously, It\'s Going to Be Investigated Probably by
Your State Patrol Group, or in Our Case, Our Police up North, but We Do
Have Expertise in Our Rangers and Some of Our Investigative People That
Would Go out on That Type of an Assignment, and What We Do in The Safety
Arena Is to Make Sure We Get a Copy of the Front Page Of the Officer\'s
Report That Does the In‑depth Investigation And We Also Have Contractors
That We Can Ask to Go to Work For Us That Have That Type of Skill So in
That Any Tort Situation the True Facts of the Case Will Come out. So We
Do Have a Variety of Ways. Yes, They Do Need to Be Investigated
Thoroughly, Especially When You Have a Severe Accident. Carolyn?

Burrell: Thank You. We Have Another Fax in from Sandy Nelson, and Her
Question Is: Does Each Supervisor Fill Out the Form on the Internet or
Is it Filled out at the State Office Level?

Nielsen: at this Point We\'ve Got a Couple Situations. We\'ve Got ‑‑ You
Know, since We Have Gone into the Team Leads And the Different People,
Right Now the Supervisor, in Order to Have the Internet Accept Accident,
it Has to Be Done by a Supervisor, and like Ralph Was Talking About, We
Still Take the Di‑134 Hard Copy, If You Don\'t Have Access to the
Internet. But Hopefully What We\'re Going To Do in Each State Is
Designate Those Folks That Can Submit and Will Be Recognized by the
Program as a Supervisor for the Effect of Getting the Accident Turned in
Properly. I Hope That Answered That Question.

Burrell: Okay. Thanks. Yogi, I Have Heard a Lot about Something Called
\"Behavior‑based Safety.\" Do You Know Anything about That.

Can You Elaborate a Little Bit?

Nielsen: Behavioral Based Safety and this Is Really a Movement by the
Bureau to Get Into a Situation Where Tasks Are Broken down into the
Elemental Parts That by Doing Them Correctly Won\'t Result in an
Accident. These Are Critical Behaviors That a Task Would Be Judged So
That You Can Have Somebody Observe to See That the Task Is Being
Performed Properly. Properly Is the Safeway That\'s Decided upon by the
Employee and The Supervisor and Some of the Jobs That We Do in the
Bureau Don\'t Lend Themselves to That Type of a Situation. It May Be
That Factory‑type Jobs Lend Themselves More To, You Know, this Is Done
in this Sequence And, Therefore, That\'s The Way It\'s Done. The
Imagination and Innovativeness of You as the Supervisor Are Going to Be
Able To Sit down with the Employee And Figure Out, Does the Task That
You Have to Accomplish, Would They Be Suitable for Tasking out the
Various Parts And Being Able to Be Observed as The Proper Way to Do a
Job? So as We Implement this in Different Areas and Different States,
and We Are Trying it a Little Bit in Alaska, We\'re Going to Find out
More What the Tasks That We Have That Lend Themselves to That Kind of
Approach.

Burrell: Okay. Thanks. We Have a Couple More Faxes in To Be Responded
To. One Is from Joe Beam and I Hope I\'m Pronouncing That Correctly, In
Worland. When Submitting the Di‑134 Electronically Through Smis, Where
Does this Transmission Go? Will We Bypassing Our State Office OWCP
Coordinator?

Nielsen: That\'s a Good Question. I Seem to Be on the Hot Seat Here. The
Report Goes ‑‑ this Is the Sequence as It\'s Been Explained To Me by the
Department of Interior Folks. It Goes, First of All, to the ‑‑ As the
Supervisor Inputs it into The Internet, it Goes down to Denver at the
Doi Computer Banks. It Is Checked, Looked At, and Then Shot Back to the
Safety Manager or Safety Professional In the State Office or in the
Office at Which the Accident Occurred. It Is Then Reviewed by a Safety
Professional to See That, First Of All, All the Pertinent Information Is
There. Then, If There\'s Some Changes That Need to Be Made, Then It\'s
Incumbent on the Safety People To Go Ahead and Get with the Supervisor
to Make Sure It\'s Filled out Properly. Then Once We Take a Good Look at
It and it States the Facts of The Case, Then We Can Give Our Blessing to
it and it Goes Back And Then Resides Back in Denver Until Such Time We
Need To, You Know, Call it Back Up, Take Another Look at Some of the
Processes That We Need to Fix, Then, So That Accidents Don\'t Happen
Again. Carolyn?

Burrell: Okay. We Have Another Fax in from Don Wye. This Is for Both
Yogi and Ralph. Does the Electronic Form Replace The Di‑134? What Is the
Accident Report Form That Ralph Talked about? And, Finally, I Don\'t
Want My Employee\'s Social Security Number on the Internet. Are There
Any Safeguards Against That?

Nielsen: I\'ll Take a Cut at a Little Bit of It. First of All, I Think
We Talked A Little Bit about the Safeguards for the Social Security
Numbers. I Would Be a Little Leery of Putting Mine up There until I Was
Firmly Convinced That There\'s No Way it Can Be Accessed And, You Know,
in this Day of High Technology, Who Knows What Might Be Tried. What Was
the Other Part Again, Carolyn?

Burrell: Does the Electronic Form Replace the Di‑134 and What Is the
Accident Report Form ‑‑ Well, That\'s for Ralph. Does the Electronic
Form Replace The Di‑134?

Nielsen: Well, it Will Replace the Di‑134 as Far as an Official
Document, but We\'re Still Going to Use it for Quite Some Time as a
Format to Gather That Information So That We Can, You Know, from the
Field ‑‑ It\'s Got to Come into an Internet Access and Be Input
Eventually. I See Personally the Di‑134 Sticking Around for Quite Some
Time. I Think as You Take a Look at The Internet, You\'re Going to See
How They Complement Each Other and Are Able to Be More Accurate
Depiction of an Accident and Gives Us the Tools We Need to Kind of Put a
Tweak To the Process So They Don\'t Happen So Much.

Slighter: I Can Answer the Question Regarding the Notice of Injury Form.
There Are Actually Two Basic Notice of Injury Forms When an Injury
Occurs, That\'s a Ca‑1 Is The Basic Information Form for Traumatic
Injuries and a Ca‑2 For Occupational Diseases. As I Said Before, We Are
Developing a System by Which That Would Be Transmitted to the Department
of Labor. We Don\'t Have That Right Now. So Those Are the Only Forms
That Are Used, Is the Ca‑1 and the Ca‑2.

Burrell: Thank You. What If an Employee Refuses to Comply with the Osha
Standard That Documents Their Training And the Mandatory Use of Personal
Protection Equipment?

Sedbrook: We\'re Going to Fight over this One?

Nielsen: I Think ‑‑ First of All, We Need to Have ‑‑ We Need To Actually
Make Sure That Employee Is Given All the Tools That He or She Needs to
Keep Them Safe and Keep Them from Being Hurt. There Is a Huge Training
Component for Anybody\'s Job in The Bureau, and We Do Have to Make Sure
That We Cover All Those Required Trainings. The Employee, Then, on Their
Part Has to Be Willing to Sign That They\'ve Received That So That We
Can Be Comfortable in Knowing That All the Supervisors Out There Are
Doing Their Jobs. Now, When a Supervisor Asks an Employee to Sign That
He or She Has Received the Specific Training and They Refuse to Sign For
Whatever the Reason, Then I Think We Turn it over to Linda In the Hrm
Department.

Sedbrook: Well, as Yogi Said, If We Can Assure Ourselves That We Have
Given the Employee All The Possible Training, We Have Made Sure That If
There Are Any Manuals Involved That They Need To Review We\'ve Given
Them the Opportunity to Do That, If There Are Perhaps Even Some Courses
They Need to Take, We Have Done Everything as a Supervisor to Ensure,
but the Employee Still Refuses to Perhaps Wear Their Protective
Equipment, Then, of Course, We Use What We Call Progressive Discipline.
The First Time You Catch Them Doing It, You Warn Them Verbally. Tell
Them You Don\'t Want to Catch Them Doing That Again. Go over Again the
Reasons Why You\'re Having Them Wear the Protective Equipment. Of
Course, If it Goes on Any Further, Then You Begin to Formally Document,
Because You Have to Understand, You\'re Putting the Bureau at Risk If
You Allow People to Disregard Osha Standards or Any Other Safety
Standards. So, Yes, Discipline Should Be Taken.

Burrell: That Wraps up Our Questions for this Point in the Program. We
Will Be Taking Questions Again Later on and Faxes. So Please Don\'t
Forget to Call Us or Send in Faxes as Questions Come to Your Mind. At
this Point Ralph Is Going to Provide Us with Some Basic Information on
the Department of Labor\'s Work ‑‑ Office of Workers\' Compensation
Program. Ralph?

Slighter: Thank You. We Have Talked by and Large About the Different
Areas of Responsibilities, about What the Agency Has to Do, the
Employee, In Some Cases the Medical Provider and We Have Gone into
Detail a Lot. Clearly We at the Department of Labor Have a Certain Area
of Responsibility, and What I Want To Talk to about Now Is What Our
Responsibilities Are, What We Have to Do, How We Pay Benefits, What
Benefits Are Available and So Forth. Clearly, We Have Two Primary
Responsibilities. The First One Is to Make Sure That We Make a Prompt,
Proper Decision on the Claim. There Are Some Claims That Do Not Lend
Themselves to Quick Decisions. We Get Stress Claims That Come In and
They Take a Long Time. There Are Other Types as Well. We Separate into
Two Different Types, Traumatics and Occupationals and When a Traumatic
Injury We Can Make a Determination Quicker than That. It\'s Usually
Clear‑cut as Far as The Cause and Resulting Disability. But We Do Have a
Responsibility To Make a Prompt, Proper Decision on a Claim Submitted to
Us. Once We Approve a Claim and Make No Mistake about It, We Do Deny
Claims, but If We Approve a Claim, We Also Have a Responsibility to Make
a Prompt Payment, Whether That Be Medical Compensation, on the Claim
That Is Submitted. For Example, with Medical Bills, We Need to Clearly
Review That The Medical Condition Is Related To the Injury. So It\'s Not
Going to Be Instantaneous. But We Do Have Responsibility to Make Sure
That Once a Claim Is Submitted on an Approved Claim That We Can Pay That
Claim as Soon as We Can. What I Want to Talk to You Now About Is Some of
the Benefits That Are Paid under Workers\' Compensation. In Fact, the
First Benefit I Am Going to Talk about Isn\'t Even Paid by Us at the
Department of Labor. Most of the Benefits That I Will Talk about Are
Paid by Us. But the First One Is a Benefit We at the Department of Labor
Call Continuation Pay Is Actually Paid for by the Bureau Of Land Manage.
That Has Some Important Information. Under Some Circumstances You Can
Refuse to Pay Continuation Play. We Will Talk about That Process Called
Controversion Later On. But Continue Way Pay Is an Important Concept.
It\'s Not for Every Injury. We Will Talk about the Restrictions in a Few
Minutes. If You Qualify for Continuation Pay, You Are Eligible for Your
Regular Pay Continued for up to 45 Calendar Days. Now, Consider That
Half of All The Injuries That Are Submitted To Us Involve No Lost Time
at All and Those That Do Involve Lost Time, the Average Lost Time Is 9
Days, You Can Usually Figure That Most Cases the Employee Returns ‑‑
Back to Work Well Before the End of the 45‑day Period. In Fact, Only
about 15% of the Cases That Are Submitted to Us Actually Involve Any
Absence From Work That\'s Not Covered by Continuation Pay. But It\'s
Paid by the Bureau of Land Management, Just like Your Regular Salary.
There Is No Charge to Sick Oriole Leave. If You\'re Disabled. That\'s
Clearly Something That You Need to Establish That the Employee Is
Entitled to 45 Days Of Continuation Pay. Remember, this Seminar Is
Technically for Supervisors, but You Supervisors Who Are Injured Are
Entitled to These Same Benefits of Continuation of Pay. In Order to Give
You One of the Restrictions and I Said There Are Several Restrictions, I
Need To Give You Definitions. We Recognize as I Said Before Two Types of
Injuries, a Traumatic Injury and an Occupational Disease. A Traumatic
Injury Occurs Within The Space of One Working Day, It\'s Usually a
Specific Incident, Slip, Trip, Fall, Lifting Incident, So Forth, or a
Series of Incidents Within One Working Day. Occupational Diseases by
Definition Take More than One Day to Develop. Conditions of Employment
on Two Days or More. Your Common Occupational Diseases Include
Repetitive Motion, They Include Hearing Loss Exposure, Exposure to Dust,
Fumes, Chemicals, Things like That. Those Are All Occupational Disease
Cases. With One Exception We Treat Them The Same at the Department of
Labor, You Are Entitled to Wage Loss Payments, Medical Benefits. But the
Exception Is Continuation of Pay. If You Have an Occupational Disease,
You Do Not Get That 45‑day Continuation of Pay Period. You Have to Apply
Immediately to Us at the Department of Labor For Your Wage Continuation
of Pay. Continuation of Pay Has Other Restrictions. You Have to File
Within 30 Days. That Can\'t Be Verbal. It Has to Be in Writing. There\'s
No Waiver of That Specific Situation. Because If You File, Say, 35 Days
after the Injury, You Wouldn\'t Get Continuation of Pay, That You You
Can Still Get Wage Loss Payments for That Same Period. You Also Have to
Use up the Maximum 45 Days ‑‑ It\'s a Maximum. You Don\'t Get a
Guaranteed 45 Days When You\'re Injured but You Have to Use it up Within
a 90‑daytime Frame from Your First Return to Duty. I Am Going to Use an
Illustration to Show You Another Part of a Continuation of Pay And That
Is That it Can Be Actually Used on an Intermittent Basis as Well. I Will
Use a Graphic to Show You An Example of an Employee Injured on July 23rd
and He Misses Work from July 23rd until August 5th. He Therefore Misses
8 Day Ins July and 4 in August and Comes Back to Work on July 5th and
Has Used 12 Days of Continuation Pay. He Then Works from August 5th
Through October 8th and Then Starts Missing Work Again on October 9th
Through the 24th Which Is Another 16 Days. Comes Back to Work on the 5th
And Starts Missing Again on October 30th. And the 31st. Two More Days.
Each of Those Periods, 8 Days in July, 4 Days in August, 16 Days In
October and Then 2 Days Later In October, Each One of Those Days Is
Covered by Continuation Pay Because It\'s Not More than 45 Days and
It\'s Not More than The Maximum of 90 Days Beyond Your First Return to
Work Date. So it Can Be on an Intermittent Basis. It Doesn\'t Have to Be
Consecutive as Long as it Doesn\'t Exceed That Maximum 45 Days. I Am
Also Going to Use a Second Illustration to Show How it Works Regarding
Partial Days. You Could Have an Employee off From Work for Only Part of
a Day And the Example You See on the Screen, You Have an Employee Who
Misses Two Hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of Two Consecutive
Weeks. Maybe They Have to Go for Physical Therapy, for Example. The Time
Card Will Look like 2 Hours of Continuation of Pay and 6 Hours of Work.
Each of Those 2 Hour Periods Counts as One of the 45 Days. It Does Not
Count as 2 Hours. You Don\'t Have to Take Your Own Sick Leave or Your
Own Annual Leave to Go for Physical Therapy. You Work 46 Hours and You
Take Continuation Pay for 2 Hours, Depending on the Doctor\'s Prognosis
as to How Long Physical Therapy Will Last. In Fact, If off Situation
Where You Take Two Hours for Physical Therapy and Then Want to Take Off
for the Rest of the Day, That\'s Where You Take off Annual Leave.
Chances Are. Because You Don\'t Get a Guaranteed 8 Hours Even Though It
Counts as One of the 8 Hours Of Continuation of Pay. As I Said Before,
There Are Certain Rights That the Agency Has to Deny Continuation of
Pay, And this Is the Process That We At the Department of Labor Called
Controversion. Controversion Doesn\'t Mean to Deny the Claim. We at the
Department of Labor Deny the Claim. But it Does Mean to Disagree With
the Validity of the Claim And under Certain Circumstances, Refuse to Pay
Continuation of Pay. In Fact, Those Circumstances Are Something That Was
Part of the Handout That Was Handed to Each One of You When the Course
Started. The Form Ca‑1, Which We Talked About Before, Was the Basic
Notice of Injury Form and Has an Instruction Sheet Attached to it And
the Instruction Seat Sheet Has a Question on It, Box 35, Does the
Employing Agency Controvert Continuation of Pay? You Can Controvert but
Then There Are 9 Reasons Listed for Not Only Controverting the Claim But
Refuse to Pay Continuation Of Pay. Those Nine Reasons Are the Only Nine
Reasons. If You Disagree with the Claim For Another Reason, You must
Initially Continue the Employees Pay. I Am Not Going to Go over Each Of
the 9 Reasons, You Have That In Your Handout and We Have Talked about
Some. For Example, If It\'s an Occupational Disease, If It\'s Not Filed
Within 30 Days. If It\'s More than 90 Days after The Return to Work
Date. There Are a Few Others That Apply Specifically to Interior. One of
the Categories That\'s Excluded for Continuation Pay Is Ycc Enrollees.
They Do Not Get Continuation of Pay. But If the Reason for You
Disagreeing with the Claim Meets One of Those Nine Categories, You Can
Refuse to Pay the Employee Continuation of Pay. There Are Six Additional
Reasons For Starting Continuation Pay, It Doesn\'t Meet One of the Nine,
But Then Later on You Can Stop It. I Want to Briefly Acquaint You With
Each One of Those. Some of Them We\'ll Talk about in Detail Later On.
Light Duty Is One of Them. There Are Six Specific Reasons. Some Are
Fairly Simple. The 45 Days Is over. Clearly You Don\'t Pay it Beyond 45
Days. The Employee Returns to Work. If the Employee Returns to Work The
Day after the Injury, Clearly They Do Not Get Continuation Pay. You Also
Have a Situation Where The Employee Doesn\'t Return to Work When the
Doctor Tells Him To or Her. The Doctor Says Return to Work Today and the
Employee Gives You A Call this Morning and Says, I Can\'t Make it into
Work Today, My Job‑related Back Injury Is Still Hurting Me, Put Me on
Continuation Pay and I Will Try To Make it in Tomorrow. No. The Doctor
Said You Could Return To Work Today Unless You Get a Medical Certificate
That Says Disabled for Today, You Stop Continuation Pay. But There Are
Three Additional Reasons That I Want to Familiarize You With, Especially
With Situations Where You Have Seasonal Employees this One Way May
Apply. If You Have Given the Employee Formal Notification of
Notification and That\'s with Seasonal Employees Maybe Their Appointment
Expires on at 9:30 On September 30th and at That Point They Have an
Injury on September 15th, You Only Pay Continuation Pay up to Their Date
of Termination. The Termination Date Has to Be Established Prior to the
Injury. But If it Is, You Don\'t Have to Give Them a 45‑day Guaranteed
Pay Period. We Also Have a Requirement ‑‑ Remember I Talked about the
Requirements of the Responsibilities of the Medical Provider. The
Medical Provider Has to Get The Medical Evidence to You and If You
Don\'t Get the Medical Evidence Within 10 Days of the First Date of
Disability, You Can Stop Continuation of Pay. Finally, the Light Duty
Situation Applies and We Will Talk about in That More Detail Later On.
If You Have a Situation Where The Employee Is Offered a Light‑duty Job
Which a Doctor Says He Can Do and He Refuses It, You Don\'t Have to Pay
Continuation of Pay Beyond That Date of Refusal. Now, There Are Nine
Reasons, Therefore, for Stopping it in The Beginning, Six More
Additional Ones for Stopping it At a Later Point. If Your Reason for
Disagreeing With the Claim Doesn\'t Fall into Any of Those Categories,
You Have to Continuation ‑‑ Continue The Employee\'s Pay for up to 45
Days. Keep in Mind the Most Common Reason That We at the Department Of
Labor Deny Claims Is That You Have a Medical Report That Doesn\'t
Support Job‑related Disability. That\'s Not Any of the Reasons I Talked
about. If You Disagree with the Claim For a Different Reason, by All
Means Indicate Your Disagreement And We Will Talk about How You Do That
Later On. But You Still Have to Continue The Employee\'s Pay under Those
Circumstances. Once the Employee Is Starting Continuation of Pay, Don\'t
Lose Track of Eye Him Just Because It\'s a Benefit to Which He or She Is
Entitled to Receive. Don\'t Lose Track of Him. Call Him Up. Let Him Know
He Is Still a BLM Employee, Even Though He Is Not Working. Be in Contact
with the Doctor. You Are Specifically Allowed Communication with the
Doctor, Not Just in Writing, but Verbally. Can You Call Him Up. One of
My Suggestions Would Be To Have One of the Health Care Professionals in
Your Office, If You Have One, Talk to Him. Maybe a Nurse in Your Office.
Doctors Are More Willing to Talk To Nurses than They Might to Be
Supervisors. Or If You Have a Contract Physician, Have Them Call the
Doctor and Talk with Him about The Capability of the Employee, The
Ability to Bring Him Back to Light‑duty Work and So Forth. But this Is
Continuation of Pay. It\'s an Important Benefit. Again, Most of the
Claims, Almost 90% of the Claims That Come, in Are Traumatic Injury
Claims, and Most of Those Cases, They\'re Entitled to a Continuation of
Pay Payment and That\'s the Only Wage Loss Payment They Receive. Now, If
You Have a Situation Where the Employee Goes Beyond 45 Days or If It\'s
an Occupational Disease Case, Immediately There Is Another Benefit That
Kicks in and That Is Compensation. Compensation Is Paid for by the
Department of Labor. I Say It\'s Paid for by the Department of Labor.
However, Keep in Mind, That at The End of the Year We\'re Going To Bill
You Back for Those Costs. So Although the Employee Applies To Us at the
Department of Labor, the BLM Actually Assumes Those Costs. Of the 5½
Million Dollars BLM Paid Last Year, 70% of it Is With this Benefit Right
Here, Wage Loss Compensation. Fur Eligible for Compensation, You\'re
Eligible for Two‑thirds Of Your Date of Injury Salary. If You Have One
or More Dependents, That Increases, by The Way, to Three‑quarters of
Your Date of Injury Salary. That Can Include Sunday Differential, Not
Premium Paid, Does Not However Include Overtime. It\'s Paid by the
Department of Labor. The Employee Applies to Us. If We Approve It, We
Will Instruct the Treasury to Issue a Check Directly to the Employee.
There Is No Time Limitation on Compensation. Unlike Continuation of Pay
for Which Is There Is a 45‑day Limitation, There Is No Such Limitation.
Last Year We Paid \$44 Million on Behalf of Employees Injured Prior to
1960. Many of Those Cases, Clearly Those Individuals Will Not Be Coming
Back to Work at All. We\'re Paying Compensation on Their Behalf as Long
as Medical Evidence Supports Job‑related Disability, Workers\'
Compensation Benefits Are Payable. Think of Your Own Salary, for
Example. I Think it Might Be Kind of Difficult for You to Envision
Taking a Cut of a Third or a Quarter of Your Salary. But Keep in Mind
this Also, That The Only Two Deductions That We Take out of Workers\'
Compensation Benefits Are Health Benefits and Insurance. We Don\'t
Deduct Taxes Because Workers\' Compensation Is Exempt From Federal and
State Income Taxes. We Don\'t Deduct Retirement Contribution, Tsp
Savings Money, Any of That. So When You Think about That, It\'s Probably
about the Same Amount You Receive Had You Been Working. If Employees
Injured He Should Not Be Financially Penalized for An Injury Which Is
Maybe Not His Fault. Sometimes You Have Situation Where Compensation
Continues for A Long Period of Time, in Fact Up to the Point Where They
Apply For Retirement. You Can\'t Get Compensation and Retirement by and
Large at the Same Time. It\'s a Dual Benefit. You Have to Elect Between
One or The Other, and If You Have a Situation Where the Employee Has To
Make That Election, Usually They Keep Their Civil Service Retirement
Because We Will Require Them to Continue to Ask For Medical
Documentation and Possibly Depending on the Circumstances Remove Them
from The Roles. They Can Then Switch over to Retirement. That\'s
Compensation. That\'s a Significant Benefit for Injured Employees. There
Are Other Benefits as Well And I Want to Briefly Talk about Each One of
Those in Turn. The next Area of Benefits Is Medical Benefits. Medical
Benefits Includes the Things That You Would Normally Think About,
Hospitalization, Surgery, Doctor\'s Bills, Maybe Includes Things That
You Don\'t Normally Think about as Well, Things like Drug Reimbursement
F A Doctor Prescribes a Drug You Can Get Reimbursed Directly. Travel to
and Forth to the Doctor and We Use the Gs Schedule of 31½ Cents a Mile.
And Actual Expenses Going to the Doctor and Coming Home. This Is All
Medical Benefits. But We Are Not Health Insurance Carriers. We Are a
Little Different from That. If You Have an Health Insurance Carrier, Hmo
or Your Private Physician, You Know That There Are Things like
Co‑payments and Deductibles and We Don\'t Have That in Workers\'
Compensation. If You Are Injured on the Job, We Will Pay All the Medical
Bills Related to That Condition. That\'s One Reason Why We Deduct For
Health Benefits Because If It\'s Unrelated to the Condition, You Submit
That Bill to Your Health Insurance Carrier. But If It\'s Related to the
Condition That\'s Compensable We Will Pay the Entire Amount. We Do Have
a Fee Schedule and The Fee Schedule May Actually Pay the Doctor Back
less than What He Bills. If He Bills for \$200, for Example, and the
Maximum for That Area for That Service Is 150, Then We Will Issue a
Check For \$150. But Unlike Your Health Insurance Carrier, He Can\'t
Bill You for The Difference. He must Accept Payment as Payment in Full.
It\'s a Medical Terminology Known As Assignment. So in That Situation,
Medical Benefits Are an Important Part Of the Workers\' Compensation N
Fact, in Half the Cases We Get, That\'s the Only Benefit That\'s Being
Claimed. The next Area and It\'s One I Never Hope You Have to Worry
About Is in the Area of Death Benefits, Because We Do Pay Death Benefits
for the Survivors Of Federal Employees, Including BLM, Obviously, That
Are Injured On the Job. The Most Common Cause of Deaths That Occur in
the Federal Workplace Are Vehicle Accidents, Whether That Be Plane
Crashes, Boat, Helicopter, Car, Whatever. That\'s the Most Common Cause
of Death Injuries and When You Hear About a Plane Crash Throughout This
Country, I Can Almost Guarantee There Will Be Some Federal Employees Who
Were on Travel Duty Status When Injured. You Probably Remember, for
Example, That Fire That Occurred Out in Colorado Several Years Ago.
There Were Some BLM Employees Who Were in There and There Were 17 People
Killed All Together And We Are Still Paying Death Benefits to the
Survivors of Several of Those People Who Died In That Fire. For the
Spouse, for Example, That\'s 50% of the Wife\'s or Husband\'s Salary at
the Time of The Death and Unless He or She Re Marries Prior to the Age
of 55 Those Benefits Continue a Lifetime. Again, They Are Not Payable
Concurrently with Survivor\'s Benefits from the Office of Personnel
Management but Generally Because Our Percentages Are Higher, They Will
Elect Workers\' Compensation. When You Have Children, There Are
Additional Percentages, a Widow and Two Children, for Example, Get 75%
and That\'s the Maximum Payable. For the Children, Those Benefits
Continue until They Turn of Age, Which Is 18 or If They\'re Full‑time
College Students, Until 23. We Also Pay Things like Burial Expenses and
Costs of Transporting the Body. That\'s the Major Area of Benefits
Payable under Workers\' Compensation. There Are Others. That\'s by No
Means Limited. We Pay Things like Vocation, Rehabilitation, Relocation
Allowances and So Forth. But That\'s the Major Area of Benefits. Now, in
Order to Get These Nice Benefits and It\'s a Fairly Nice Packet
Available to You as Supervisors as Well, You Have to Meet Certain
Requirements, and I Want to Summarize for You in the Next Couple Minutes
What Those Requirements Are. In My Former Occupation, One of The Things
I Did Was Train Claims Examiners and the Section I Am Going to Give You
in the Next Five to 10 Minutes I Spent A Week with Claims Examiners on
That. So Clearly You Will Get an Abbreviated Version. But You Need to
Know about What Claims Examiners Look For, What We at the Department of
Labor Look for When We\'re Looking at a Claim to Determine What\'s
Covered and What\'s Not. So I Am Going to Summarize for The next Couple
Minutes What Those Basic Benefits Are. The First Requirement Is That You
Be a Federal Employee. We Don\'t Cover Military. We Don\'t Cover
Contractors, by And Large. They Are Covered by the Individual States.
But If You Are a Civilian, Federal Employee, You Are Covered under ‑‑
for Workers\' Compensation Purposes, and That Doesn\'t Matter Whether
You\'re Career or Career Conditional, Part Time, Intermittent, Seasonal,
in School, Volunteer. The List Continues. You Get the General Idea.
There Is No Minimum Length of Service Unlike Retirement. If You, for
Example, Have Worked Three Days for the Government, You Will Get the
Same Level of Benefits as Someone Who Has Worked for the Government
Three Days, Assuming the Same Level of Salary, of Course. In That Type
of Situation We Are Going to Ask Clearly the Supervisor Did this Person
Work For You When Injured. They May Have since Left the Government about
If They Are Claiming an Injury While Working For You, They Are a Federal
Employee. The Second Requirement, it Again Won\'t Take That Much, Is the
Time Limitation. There Are Two Time Limitations. The First One I Have
Told You About. You Have to File for Continuation of Pay Within 30 Days
and That Has to Be in Writing. All Other Benefits, Medical Benefits,
Wage Loss Compensation, Death Benefits, et Cetera, You Have a Three‑year
Time Frame. Three Years from the Date of Injury. In Fact with
Occupational Diseases by Definition There Is More than One Date of
Injury You Have Three Years from the Date Of Last Exposure or Date of
Awareness, Whichever Comes Last. You Have Three Years from That Time.
Again, Most Claims We Don\'t Have A Problem with That, 99.9% of Our
Claims That Are Filed Well Within the Three‑year Time Frame. But the
Other Three‑year Requirements Take a Little Bit Longer to Explain. The
Third One Is Something That We Call Fact of Injury. And There must Be in
Workers\' Compensation an Incident Which Results in Measurable Physical
Disability Before We Will Accept That Individual Claim. We Have Had
Situations, for Example, Where Employee Is Injured on May 11th, Employee
Files a Notice of Injury Form, I Was Injured While Lifting Boxes At Work
on May 11th and the Supervisor Checks the Time Card And May 11th Was a
Sunday. He Works Monday Through Friday, And He Wasn\'t Working That Day.
Clearly You Have a Problem. We Can\'t Accept under Those Circumstances,
Especially If He May Have Told the Doctor That The Occurred on May 11th.
Clearly We Have a Problem. Chances Are We Would Say That No Injury
Occurred as Alleged. You Can Also Have a Situation, For Example, Where
the Employee Claims an Injury but Never Sees The Doctor. As Far as
We\'re Concerned, Unless There\'s Some Measurable Physical Disability,
and That Can Only Be Measured by a Doctor, Then No Injury Has Occurred.
Sometimes We Get into the Issue Of Fact of Injury When We Talk About
Preventative Measures. For Example, Let\'s Say You Work In an Office
with an Employee Who Supposedly Hasn\'t Been Feeling Well the Last
Couple Weeks and Suddenly Stops Working, and You Ask the Supervisor What
Happened, and He Says, You Haven\'t Heard? He Has Tuberculosis. There Is
an Increase in the Amount of Tuberculosis in this Country. Of Course,
You\'re Concerned You Might Have It. So You Go to Your Doctor, Get a
Full Lab Workout, Chest X‑rays. The Lab Results Come Back Four Days
Later. You\'re Clean. You Don\'t Have the Disease. We\'re Real Happy for
You, but Problem Is, of Course, Then There Is a \$300 Lab Bill and
Doctor\'s Bill That Comes In, and That Is Not Payable under Worker\'s
Compensation Because You Don\'t Have Measurable Physical Disability.
Now, If You Did, If Turns Out, For Example, You Did Have Tuberculosis
and Given the Latency Period and Period of Exposure and So Forth, and
Can You Relate to That Your Exposure To Your Co‑worker, That\'s
Compensable. But Because You Are Clean, There Is Nothing Wrong with You,
You Have No Measurable Physician Disability and That Bill Would Not Be
Payable by Your Workers\' Compensation. Could it Be Payable by the
Health Insurance Carrier? I Don\'t Know. That\'s Their Rules. But with
Fact of Injury There Must Be Some Measurable Evidence Of Injury. The
Fourth One Is Performance of Duty. It\'s Not Enough That it Occurs While
You\'re Working. You Have to Have a Situation Where the Injury Has
Occurred Not Only While You\'re Working, But Also it Has to Arise in and
Out of the Course of Employment. Let Me Give You an Example of That.
Let\'s Say That You Have an Individual Who Has Epilepsy, Nonjob‑related
Condition. He Is Working at His Work Space, An an Epileptic Seizure,
Falls Down, Hits the Floor, Laceration On the Scalp, Contusion to the
Knee. Chances Are You Will Have a Witness Statement. Two‑thirds of the
Injuries on The Job No One Sees. But Usually with These Types of
Situations the Employee Doesn\'t Know What Happened and You Do Have a
Witness Statement in Someway, Shape or Form. In That Case Clearly it
Would Seem That Is Covered but I Will Tell You That It\'s Not Because
Your Fall Was Due to a Personal Preexisting Nonjob‑related Condition.
The Only Thing it Has to Do with The Job Is Coincidental with Working
Hours and That\'s Not Enough to Cover You for Workers\' Compensation. It
Has to Arise out of Conditions of Employment. One of the Cases
Especially Pertaining to the BLM Where That Specifically Applies to Is
Emergencies. Let\'s Say That You Have a BLM Employee Who May Be on Call
24 Hours a Day and He Gets a Call At 8:30 at Night. We Have a Forest
Fire in this Rangeland. We Need to You Come and Help Fight It. From the
Time That That Person Drops ‑‑ Picks up the Telephone Finds out about
the Fire until They Go to Work, Driving Probably Real Fast on the Road,
Fight the Fire and Come Home, They Are Covered under Workers\'
Compensation and That\'s an Important Distinction Because in Most Cases
You\'re Not Covered Coming to and from Work. Your Normal Commute, until
You Actually Enter Federal Premises, Whether That Be the Rangeland Where
You Work or the Building, Whatever, You Are Not Covered on Your Regular
Commute. The Exception Is with Emergencies. But Keep in Mind That the
Emergency Here Is Defined as Immediate Danger to Life And/or Property. I
Make That Distinction Because Let\'s Take the Example of the Employee
Who Gets a Call from a Supervisor at 8:30 in the Morning on Saturday,
Hey, You Have to Come In, We Have Three Employees Who Called in Sick and
We Need You to Cover Their Shift You and Come into Work. Clearly Once
You Enter the Premises of the Agency You Are Covered. But Your Commute
in That Case Is Not Immediate Danger to Life And/or Property. Not as
OWCP Defines as an Emergency. That Injury You Sustain During Your
Commute, Therefore, Would Not Be Covered. Because It\'s Not in the
Performance of Duty. Let Me Give You One Final Example Related to the
Issue of Performance of Duty and That\'s In Altercations. In the Ideal
World There Would Be No Fights on the Job. You Know That We Don\'t Live
in An Ideal World, And, in Fact, Fights Do Occur. Now, Most of the Time
Fortunately It\'s Verbal. People Yell at Each Other, Blow Off Steam and
That\'s That. But Sometimes it Gets More than That. Sometimes it Gets to
Physical Altercation and Usually Those Are Always Witnessed, a Fight
Attracts a Crowd, and What We at The Department of Labor Have
Determined, and this Is Completely Different from the Personnel
Standpoint, Because Federal Employees Aren\'t Supposed to Fight, and You
Can Institute Discipline Action Against Employees for Fighting On the
Job, but We Don\'t Actually Look at Who Caused the Fight. In Fact, If I
Were to Be Asked To Federal Employees Who Fight On the Job Are They
Covered on Workers\' Compensation My Answer Would Be, Well, Maybe. The
Reason for That Is Because We\'re Going to Look at Not Who Caused the
Fight but What Caused The Fight. If it Arises out of the Job, If A
Supervisor Tells an Employee To Use an Allen Wrench to this Fix this
Piece of Machinery and The Employee Says He Has No Intention of Using
the Allen Wrench and Hits the Supervisor Over the Head with It, in That
Type of Situation Clearly the Fight That Arises Is One That\'s Job
Related and We Would Cover Both Employees, the Employee Who Hit the
Supervisor on the Head Might Have a Sprained Arm, for Example. By
Contrast You Might Have an Employee Who Had Has a Fight Because He Won
the Football Pool And He Refuses to Pay Up. Even Though It\'s on the Job
During Working Hours, That Would Not Be Covered Because it Does Not
Arise out of Performance of Job Duties. There Are Several Other
Examples. If You Have Questions, We Will Have Another Question and
Answer Period Later On, Things like Going Away Parties for Supervisors,
Injuries That Occur While on Travel Duty Status, Intoxication, Remember,
it Has To Arise in and out of the Job In Order to Be Covered. The Fifth
Requirement, and One That Is Not Generally in the Hands of the Employee
Is in the Area of Medical Evidence. Medical Evidence Can Only Be
Supplied by a Competent Physician, Doctor Osteopath, Whatever. But If
You Are ‑‑ You\'re a Physician, That\'s the Only Person That Can Supply
Medical Evidence. Every Single Claim That Comes to Us, it Has to Be
Accompanied by Medical Evidence. With Medical Evidence, it Has to Show
That There\'s a Relationship, a and Effect Relationship Between the
Injury And Disability. Usually That\'s Pretty Clear‑cut. If You Fall
down on an Electrical Cord in the Hallway And Break Your Leg, There Is a
Cause‑and‑effect Relationship Between Your Fall and Disability Resulting
from the Broken Leg. Sometimes It\'s Not So Easy. Heart Attacks Is Good
Example F You Have a Heart Attack, We Can\'t Say Automatically You Are
Covered. We Have to Determine What Caused The Heart Attack. As You Know,
Many Times There\'s Multiple Causative Factors in Heart Attacks. Not
Only Stress on the Job, Which Is Always the Allegation, But You Also
Have Things like Diet, like Heredity, like Smoking History, like
Overweight. These Are All General Risk Factors for Individuals Who Have
Heart Attacks and it May Be in Many Cases There Is a Combination of
Factors. It\'s Not Clear‑cut Always. The Most Common Reason That We Deny
Claims at the Department of Labor Is Insufficient Medical Evidence That
Shows That There Is a Relationship Between the Injury and Subsequent
Disability. It\'s a Very Important Relationship. It\'s Also the Only One
That\'s Continuing. You May Be Disabled for Two Weeks. We Are Going to
Require Another Medical Certificate Two Weeks Down the Road That Shows
You\'re Continued to Be Disabled Due to The Injury. With Medical
Evidence, It\'s a Continuing Relationship. Well, There They Are, Five
Basic Requirements for Coverage. Four out of Five Won\'t Do, by The Way.
We Have to All Five Met Before Workers\' Compensation Is Ensured. We\'re
Going to Go Through Some Other Areas of Coverage a Little Later On, but
I Am Going to Turn The Program Back over to Carolyn At this Time.

Burrell: Ralph, Suppose the Employee Disagrees with the Determination
Made by the Department of Labor on Their OWCP Claim.

Slighter: If an Employee Disagrees with What the Individual Has ‑‑ What
We at the Department of Labor Have Said Regarding a Claim and When We
Deny a Claim We Do Issue a Formal Decision, and Say You\'re Not Entitled
to Benefits, We Give the Employee Appeal Rights. They Have Actually
Three Separate Appeals: a Right to Reconsideration, They Have a Right to
a Hearing, Which Means A Hearing Examiner Stationed in Washington Will
Travel to Within 300 Miles of Where They Live to Conduct a Hearing or
They Have a Right to Go, Unlike Most Appellate Procedures, They Can Go
Right to the Top. The Employees Compensation Appeals Board Which Is
Based Only in Washington Can Review Only the Information on File at The
Time of the Decision. We Have Internal Appeal Rights That the Employee
May Exercise When a Claim Is Denied. So That\'s Basically What Happens.
They Have Appeal Rights That Are Given to Them.

Burrell: Okay. What about Continuation of Pay, Isn\'t Appear Right of
Every Employee?

Slighter: I Don\'t Think So. Continuation of Pay Is an Entitlement, Not
Necessarily a Right. In Order to Establishment an Entitlement, They
Specifically Have to Meet Certain Criteria. Clearly the Occupational
Disease Case, Congress Wrote the Law for Continuation of Pay in 1974
Specifically for Traumatic Injuries. So You\'re Not Entitled to it in
Every Single Case. If You Meet the Criteria, it Is An Entitlement but it
Is Not a Right, Specifically.

Burrell: Thank You. For Those of You Who Tuned in With Us at the Very
Beginning of The Broadcast, I Would like to Apologize. We Did Experience
a Technical Difficulty with the Tape of Our Deputy Director Mat
Millenbach And We Do Hope to Be Able to Show You the Tape in Full Before
The Completion of this Broadcast. Now We Will Take That 15‑minute Break
That We Promised You Before. When We Return, Ralph Will Continue His
Overview of the OWCP Program and We Will Take a Look at BLM\'s Program
to Help Injured Employees Get Back to Work. We Will See You Back in a
Few Minutes! Test Test.

Burrell: Welcome Back to Our Seminar on Workers\' Compensation And
BLM\'s Back‑to‑work Policy. With Us Again for the Second Half of Our
Show Is Linda Sedbrook, Director of the National Human Resources
Management Center in Denver.

Sedbrook: Hello, Again.

Burrell: Yogi Neilsen Is Also Back with Us, Who Is the Safety Manager in
Our Alaska State Office Here at BLM.

Nielsen: Hi, Carolyn.

Burrell: as Well as Ralph Slighted Slighter Again with Us From the
Washington, D.c. Office Of the Department of Laborer, The Office of
Workers\' Compensation. Before We Begin Our Panel Discussion this
Afternoon, as Promised to You Earlier, We Do Have the Full Videotape of
Our Deputy Director Mat Millenbach Which We Will View at this Time.

Millenbach: Good Morning. Thanks for Taking the Time to Participate in
this Office of Workman\'s Compensation Program Training Session. This
Session Will Address an Important New Approach to Dealing with the
Long‑standing Problem of Loss Productivity Due To Workplace Injuries.
You Will Be Instructed on Accident Prevention and the Bureau\'s Policy
for Ensuring That Insured Employees Can Return to Work as Quickly as
Possible. I Strongly Endorse this New Approach. Year in and Year out BLM
Pays a High Price for Work‑related Injuries. When an Accident Happens
That Takes a Person Away from the Job For More than a Few Days, the
Results Can Be Devastating to The Employee and Have Serious Consequences
in the Workplace. The Injured Person Suffers Physical Pain and Family
Members Are Affected as Routines Change To Cope with the Impacts of the
Injury. The Injured Employee\'s Workplace Is Also Affected. Efficiency
and Customer Service Are Impacted, His Work Gets Spread Around to Co‑ers
and Time Is Lost on Investigations, Paper Work, Recruiting a Replace
Ment And So Forth. The Injury May Also Have a Significant Monetary Cost
to BLM. In Recent Years Our Documented Injury‑related Costs Have
Averaged about \$5.5 Million per Year. We Have to Get Better at
Preventing Accidents, Getting Injured Workers Back to Work and Reducing
These Injury‑related Cost. You Managers and Supervisors Are The Key to
Achieving this. In Doing an Effective Job of Preventing Accidents and
Minimizing the Impacts of Accidents That Do Occur, You\'ll Maximize the
Use of Our Human Resources. We Hope this Training Session Will Help You
Succeed. Thank You.

Burrell: Thanks So Much, Mat, Also for Taking the Time out of Your Busy
Schedule to Tape That Segment to Share with Us. Ralph Talked Earlier
about OWCP Benefits and Coverage Issues. I Would like to Ask Him at this
Time to Explain to Us How We Can Apply this When There Is an On‑the‑job
Injury by an Employee.

Slighter: Sure. As You Well Know from Your Own Jobs, Your Job Isn\'t
Finished Until the Paper Work Is Done and Clearly from the Department of
Labor\'s Perspective There Is Certain Information You Need to Provide to
Us and It\'s Also Information That Goes Internally To BLM Before We Can
Make Any Decision on the Merits of the Claim. The Most Important Form,
and We\'ve Already Touched on it Several Times Is the Ca‑1, Notice of
Injury Form. This Is a Form That\'s Filled out On the Front by the
Employee. It\'s Then Turned into the Agency And the Agency Fills it out
on The Back. The Agency Is Whoever the Agency So Designates. In Most
Cases That\'s Going to Be The Immediate Supervisor of the Injured
Employee. What We Are Going to Go Through Now and I Have an Exercise
Where We Are Going to Look at the Back Of the Ca‑1, Is Look at Some of
The Items There Because You Will See That on this Ca‑1 We Are Going to
Ask You Some Questions We Have Just Gone over the Information on in the
Last Few Minutes. Remember, We Went Through the Exercise Just a Few
Minutes Ago Before Break Time about What the Requirements Are for
Coverage, That You Have to Be in Performance of Duty, You Have to Be a
Federal Employee and So Forth. You Will See from the Basic Notice of
Injury Form Which the Employee Is Going to Complete And Give to You That
We\'re Going To Ask You about Each One of Those Specific Items. You\'re
Going to See on the Screen in a Few Minutes the Notice of Injury Form,
Ca‑1. It Is Filled out on the Agency\'s Part, Supervisor\'s Report
Boxes. I Will Direct Your Attention to A Few Items on the Report. For
Example, One of the Questions Asked Is on Box 21, The Date of Injury,
Which the Employee Puts On. Box 22, the Date That the Notice Is
Received. That\'s How We Measure Whether The Claim Is Filed Within 30
Days or Within Three Years or Whatever. In Fact, the Notice Received,
Remember, Is on the Part of the Supervisor, When You Get It, Not When We
at the Department of Labor Get It. You Will Tell Us When You Got The
Notice. Box Number 27 Asks the Question, Was the Employee Injured in the
Performance of Duties? Based on What We Talked about Performance of
Duties, Not Just During Normal Working Hours but Something That Actually
Arises Out of Your Job Duties, That\'s Something That You Will Be Able
To Answer. I Am Going to Zoom in a Little Bit Here with a Few Other
Boxes. Box 33 Asks the Question Do Medical Reports Show the Employee Is
Disabled for Work? That Tells You a Couple Things. First of All, You
Need Access to That Information. You Need to Know If the Employee Is
Disabled from Work and it Also Enables You in That Case to Make a
Cursory Review and Determine If the Employee Is Possible Capable of
Coming Back To Light Duty. Another Question That\'s Asked Is Box Number
34, Which Asks the Question, Does Your Knowledge About the Facts of this
Injury Agree with the Statements of the Employee And/or the Witness?
That\'s a Fact of Injury Question Where That Is Specifically Asked
About. Finally on Box Number 35, it Asks the Question: If the Employing
a Controverts Continuation of Pay, State the Reason in Detail. If You
Disagree with the Claim, That\'s Where You Let Us Know Bit, Give Your
Reasons for and It Then We Will Determine Eligibility for Benefits.
That\'s the Ca‑1. We Are Going to Ask You to Complete the Back of That
Form, Sign It. In Many Cases You Won\'t Even Have to Submit it onto the
Department of Labor. As I Said Before, We Only Want Cases Where There\'s
Lost Time or Medical Expenses That Are Involved. If the Employee Is Just
Documenting an Injury, Something Happened but They Don\'t Need Medical
Treatment, but They\'re Giving You a Ca‑1 Because They\'re Afraid That
Something Might Happen Later on to Cause Disability, That\'s Fine. You
Fill the Form out and Then You Put That in the Employee\'s Medical
Folder and If There Are Problems Later On, That Can Then Be Submitted to
Us at the Department of Labor. That\'s the Basic Notice of Injury Form.
In Fact, about 90% of All the Claims That Come to Us Come in On That
Form. I Will Tell You That When We as Claims Examiners at the Department
of Labor Make a Decision, Many Times We Will Be Able to Make a Decision
Based on Two Forms That Come In, the Ca‑1 Is One Form and the Medical
Documents, Some Type of Document From the Doctor. We Will Talk about
Those Forms. Of the Other 10%, Remember I Said 90% Are for Traumatic
Injuries, Other Other 10% Are Going to Come into Us as Occupational
Disease Claims, Typical Occupational Disease Claims Include Things like
Repetitive Motion Syndrome, Exposure to Loud Noise, Stress Claims. These
Are by and Large Occupational Disease Cases, Factors of More than One
Day Are Involved in the Claim. In Those Cases the Eligibility Is
Different. You Don\'t Get Continuation of Pay. You Have to Go
Immediately into Compensation. And You Use a Different Form. The Form
That\'s Glued this Case Is a Form Ca‑2. You as a Supervisor as Was True
With the Ca‑1 the Back Side of The Form. The Employee Fills out the
Front, Gives it to You, the Supervisor, You Fill out the Back of the
Form. The Ca‑2 Is Yellow to Give it a Contrast with the Ca‑1, Which Is
White. Basically It\'s the Same Type of Information. You Summarize What
Happened. You Don\'t Controvert an Occupational Disease Claim. There Is
a Lot More Information Asked on the Instructions to Ca‑2 That We Are
Asking You to Submit, but Other than That It\'s The Same Process. Notice
of Injury Form Gets Filled out by the Employee, Sent To You as
Supervisor, Sent from The Supervisor on the BLM OWCP Coordinator and
Then Sent to Us In the Department of Labor. Once We Get That We Will
Develop The Claim, Make a Decision on The Merits of the Claim. Those Are
Your Two Basic Categories. Actual 30 There Is a Form for Death Claims.
Hopefully You Will None of Those, but There Are There Is Actually a Ca‑6
Form Filled out By the Agency along Those Lines. But There Is Another
Cat Gore Eve Injuries I Want ‑‑ Forms I Want to Talk about and That Is
Specifically in the Area of Medical Evidence. There Are ‑‑ We Don\'t
Require That Our Forms Be Used. But We Do Have Forms That Are There for
the Convenience of the Doctor And, in Fact, One of the Forms You Need to
Be Aware of Because It\'s Action That\'s Required by You the Supervisor
And That Is Form Ca‑16, Which Is A Medical Authorization Form. The
Supervisor or Designated Official at the Agency Fills out The Front of
the Ca‑16 and to Explain What That Is, the Back Is Filled out by the
Doctor, by The Way, but to Explain What That Is, I Need to Explain Why
We Came and Have a Ca‑16 in the First Place. We Had Situations Where
Federal Employees Went to Medical Providers, Hospitals, Doctors, Who Did
Not Have Health Insurance Carriers, for One or Another. They Chose Not
to Have One. They May Have Had Coverage Through Their Spouse, May Only
Be Temporary Employees and So Forth. Those Individuals Who Go to a
Medical Provider I Can Almost Guarantee You You Are Going to Be Asked
Insurance Coverage. You Are Going to Be Asked for Assurance the Bill
Will Be Paid. If You Have No Insurance Coverage, They Are Within Their
Rights, Depending on State Statutes and So Forth, to Either Refer You on
to Another Provider Or, in Some Cases, to Deny Medical Treatment.
That\'s Clearly Not a Situation Which We\'re as Federal Employees And as
Federal Managers Going to Allow to Accept. If You Have a Federal
Employee Who Has a Job‑related Injury, You Get the Treatment First and
You Worry about Payment Later And That\'s What the Ca‑16 Is For.
Properly Executed by the Agency It Is a Contract, a Guarantee of
Payment, That the Agency Will Be Responsible for Paying That Medical
Bill Even If We at the Department of Labor End up Denying the Claim. In
Fact, in Many Cases That Occurs. The Ca‑16 Is Issued, We Deny the Claim
but Because the 16 Was Issued, We Will Pay the Medical Bill That Arises.
The Ca‑16, Unless We Cancel Authorization Before Then, Is Good for 60
Days When Given to The Physician of Choice by the Employee. That Can Be
Used Pie the Doctor As a Medical Report Form. They May Use Other Forms.
In Fact, We\'re Going to Many Times Suggest They Use a We Will Talk
about next Which Is the Duty Status Form, the Form Ca‑17. And the Ca‑17,
Again, Filled in By the Supervisor on the Front Of the Form. You
Summarize on the Front What The Employee\'s Limitations Are. Then the
Doctor on the Back of The Form Goes in and Says this Is What the
Employee Can Do. This Is What the Employee Is Capable of Doing Regarding
Sitting, Standing, Walking, Crawling, Stooping, How Long He Can Sit, How
Many Minutes Consecutively, So Forth. The Ca‑17 Will Allow You to
Determine the Employee\'s Capability of Performing Light‑duty Positions
Because the Doctor May Say this Employee Can Only Lift up to 20 Pounds
and as A Warehouseman He or She May Be Normally Required to Lift 50
Pounds. Clearly They Can\'t Do Their Old Job but Are Capable of Doing
Something Else. That\'s How You Find out Through That Form. As We Said
Before, We Don\'t Require These Forms Be Used. There Are Some
Circumstances, And Occupational Diseases Are a Good Example of That
Where We Actually Prefer That the Reports Come in in a Narrative Form.
But Especially in the Initial Period of Disability Where It\'s Very
Important to Give the Employee the Impression That They\'re Going to Be
Coming Back To Work That the Ca‑17 Should Be Given Some High Priority
Because That\'s the Form That Enables the Doctor to Indicate the
Limitations and for You to Tailor Some Type of Job You Give The Employee
Consistent with Those Limitations. Don\'t Hesitate to Not Just Read
What\'s on the Form but Talk to The Doctor, Communicate with Him In
Writing During the Continuation of Pay Period Don\'t Hesitate to Give
Him a Call. Again, You Might Want to Have Someone in Your Office like a
Contract Physician or Nurse Call Them Up. One Other Tip I Might Give
You, Many Times You\'re Better off Not Necessarily Talking with the
Doctor but to the Person in the Doctor\'s Office Who Fills out The
Forms, Whether That Be the Second Secretary or Nurse or Whoever. They
Can Give You the Same Information That the Physician Has Already Given
You and Keep In Communication with Your Medical Providers for Your
Individual Employees. Clearly That\'s Our View of the Process and
Clearly We Need to Have Certain Medical Documentations That Come In, but
You and BLM Need Certain Information as Well. I Am Going to Turn it over
to Linda Now to Allow Her to Talk About BLM\'s Role in this Process.

Sedbrook: Thank You, Ralph. What I Am Going to Talk to You About Are
Some Forms That Are Unique for the BLM. We Had to Really Sit down and
Think Through All of this and Think What Might Be Helpful to You
Supervisors and the Employees out There in Developing this Program. One
of the Forms That We Have Developed Is an Employee Instruction Sheet,
and the Employee Can Actually Use this Sheet to ‑‑ it as a Check List.
It Goes Through All the Responsibilities. It\'s a List That You Can Go
Through with Your Employee to Help Them Understand All the Steps That
must Be Taken. The Second One That We\'ll Talk About Is the Medical
Release Form, and this Basically Is a Form That the Employee Will Sign
Which Releases Medical Information to the Proper Authorities in the
Bureau of Land Management So That We Can Make an Informed Decision. The
Third One Is a Form Letter That We Developed Which Basically Goes from
the Supervisor to the Attending Physician, and this Will Talk About
Restricted Duty and Will Explain to the Doctor That We Do Have
Restricted Duty Assignments Available and We Would like to Work with
That Physician to Help Establish a List of Duties for The Employee to
Perform Within Their Physical Limitations. Now, If Some of You Are like
Me, If You Get over One Form, I Get Lost, and Ralph Has Talked about
Some Forms, and I Have Talked About Some Forms. So What We Did in Our
OWCP Guide That Will Be Coming to You Shortly, We Will Have in There a
Pocket and it Will Have All the Forms We Have Talked about Today In That
OWCP Guide Packet. So When You Get That, Take a Look at That, and I
Think it Will Become a Lot More Clearer Than Probably Us Just Going down
Through All the Forms. Thank You. Back to You, Carolyn.

Burrell: Linda, If the Supervisors Have Any Questions Once They Receive
the OWCP Guide, Who Should They Talk With?

Sedbrook: I Believe That the OWCP Coordinator in Your State Is Probably
the Best Person to Go to and Ask about the Forms or Any of the Things
That Ralph and I Have Gone over. Remember, I\'ll Remind You Again, In
Some Locations That OWCP Coordinator Is Located in the Human Resources
Office. In Others, It\'s in the Safety Office. But They Will Be Able to
Help You.

Burrell: Okay. You Know, We\'ve Gotten a Little More than Halfway
Through the Broadcast So Far and I Am Sure That There Are a Number of
Supervisors and Managers That Are Sitting out There and Wondering, Why
Am I Having to Attend this Broadcast Today? Would You like to Talk a
Little Bit about Why We\'re Having this Training Today.

Sedbrook: Sure. I Guess Six Months Ago I Would Have Asked Why Am I Here
Today. The Reason Is That We Really Are Looking at All of These
Programs, and It\'s Not Just the BLM or the Department of Interior, and
Trying to Really Assume Our Management Responsibilities. This Is a Part
of Human Resources Management, Managing People, but We\'re Also in this
Process Managing Government Dollars, and So the Department And Congress,
They\'re Real Anxious for Us to Get Ahold of These Programs and Start to
Manage Them, and That\'s Why We Were Tasked with Setting up a Model
Program, and We Think BLM Is Going to Have a Terrific Program with the
Supervisors\' Support.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You, Linda. I Hope You Have Been Listening Closely,
Because in Just a Few Minutes We Are Going to Give You An Opportunity to
Apply What You Have Learned. But First, Let\'s Introduce You To a
Typical Employee and See How His Supervisor Handles a Workplace Injury.
Charlie Is a Materials Handler At a BLM Warehouse. He Spends Only a
Couple Hours at His Desk Each Day. For the Majority of His Day He Keeps
the Warehouse in Order, He Receives Deliveries and Provides The Rest of
Office with Supplies. His Job\'s Physical Requirements Are Strenuous. He
Constantly Lifts up to 48 Pounds. He Is Often Forced to Bend for An
Extended Period of Time and Stretch with a Load in His Arms. This Is
What Happened One Morning.

Ha, Ha, Got You That Time, Pete!

Yeah, You Sure Did.

Oh, Ohhhh! I Think I\'m ‑‑ I\'m Going to Have To Sit down. I Might Have
Hurt My Back That Time.

You Sure?

Yeah.

Ohhhh!

See Ya Later.

Lucy, I Wonder If We Can Talk For a Second?

Hi, Charlie. Have a Seat. What\'s the Matter. I\'m Not Feeling Too Good.
I Just Hurt Myself down in the Warehouse.

Oh, Really? What Happened.

Well, I Was Taking a Box down Off That Top Shelf, and I Slipped and
Fell.

I See. Charlie, What Really Happened?

Well, You Know Pete and I Have this Little Rubber Band War, and I Got
Pete Good, and I Turned over a Trash Can, I Can Never Find One of Those
Stepladders, and Got on the Trash Can and Then Pete Came by And Kind of
Got Me in the Ribs, And We All Went Tumbling and the Box Came down on
Top of Us. I\'m Afraid That I Wrenched My Back Pretty Good.

Charlie, We\'re Going to Have To Talk about That Later, but Since it
Appears as Though You Were Injured on the Job, We Are Going to Have to
Complete Some Forms for You to Send to Department of Labor ‑‑ or Rather
For Us to Send to Department of Labor. However, it Appears as Though
You\'re Hurting. Maybe We Should Get You to the Doctor. What Do You
Think?

Oh, I Could Put off the Doctor for a Couple Minutes If We Could Get the
Forms Done. I Would like to Do it Right.

Okay. If You\'re Sure That You Can Stand the Pain. I Have Here Some
Forms, and Some Of These Forms You Will Have to Complete, Some Your
Doctor Will Have to Complete. So I\'ll Go Through the Forms That You
Have to Complete and Then You Can Take the Rest to Your Doctor. Is That
Okay with You?

Sure.

.

All Right. Great. The First Form Is a Set of Instructions. Basically
What it Will Do Is Walk You Through the Process of Filing for a Claim.
On this Second Sheet it Describes the Bureau\'s to Return To Work
Program. I Encourage You to Read it Carefully and to Explain it to Your
Doctor.

Okay.

this Second Form Is a Doctor\'s Release. What this Form Will Allow Me to
Do Is to Call Your Doctor to Discuss Your Injury with Him. It Will Also
Allow Me to Coordinate the Return to Work Duties That I Am Going to
Assign You If I Have To, and this Way We Can All Be Comfortable with
What You Will Be Doing. Now, I Want You to Understand, I Will Be Talking
to the Doctor Only If I Absolutely Have To. If I Don\'t, I Won\'t Be
Calling Him.

Okay.

this Third Form Is a Ca‑1. This Form Establishes Your Claim With
Department of Labor. So It\'s Really Important That When You Complete
the First Side Of this Form That You\'re Very Detailed and That You
Include All the Facts. It Will Tell the Story about What Happened When
You Hurt Yourself and Then Return this Form to Me and I Will Complete
The Rest of It, Which Means I Will Get Any Witness Statements If There
Are Witnesses There and I Will Complete the Reverse Side, and Once We
Get All the Information Together, I Will Take it to Human Resources.
They Will Process it and Send it To Department of Labor.

Okay.

the Rest of These Forms Are For Your Doctor. So I Won\'t Explain Them to
You, But I Do Have to Give You One More Form.

Okay.

this Is a Duty Status Report, Which I Have Completed on All of The
Employees, However, this Is Yours Specifically. What this Form Does Is
Let Your Doctor Know What the Physical Requirements Are for Your Present
Job. What We Need the Doctor to Do Is To Complete the Reverse Side. He
Needs to Tell Me Whether You Can Return Back to Your Present Position or
If You Can\'t, What You Can and Cannot Do. It\'s Very Important That I
Get This Form Back Either When You Return to Work this Afternoon or
Tomorrow Morning. So Be Sure and Bring this Form To Your Doctor\'s
Attention.

Okay. I\'ll Remember to Bring this Back, Then.

Okay. Great. Do You Want to Sit Here and Read Through the Forms and
Complete The Information You Need to Complete?

Sure.

Okay. Great.

Well, Here\'s the Forms, Lucy. That Was Easier than I Thought It Would
Be.

Thanks, Charlie. I\'ll Go Ahead and Look Through Them When I Have a
Minute. Now, Do You Have a Ride to the Doctor?

No, I Don\'t. I Carpooled this Morning. I\'m Not Sure I Could Drive
Anyway. I\'m Starting to Hurt a Little Bit More Now.

I See. Well, I\'d Be Happy to Take You To the Doctor If Would You like
Me To.

Okay. I Would like That.

Okay. Great! Let Me Finish this One Thing and Then We Can Go to the
Doctor, And I Will Be Sure to Take the Forms, So Don\'t Worry about
Them.

Burrell: So While Charlie Is Off at the Doctor, Yogi and Ralph Will
Discuss the Safety And OWCP Aspects of What Happened to Charlie. Yogi,
Let\'s Begin with You.

Nielsen: in Addition to Filling out the Proper Paper Work, Safety
Managers Are Concerned That Accidents like This Don\'t Happen Again. The
Supervisor Will Also Need to Enter the Facts of the Accident Into the
Safety Management Information System. The Employee Has Made a Number Of
Poor Activity Choices, but He Is a Source of Information as Any Witness
That Might Be Present. Make Sure That Statements Are Taken Telling When,
Where and How Things Occurred and That All The Pertinent Information Is
Included. Ralph?

Slighter: from the Department Of Labor Stan Pointed, Clearly One of the
Things We\'re Going to Have to Make a Decision on Is The Issue of the
Paper Work That Needs to Be Completed. From Our Perspective We Need to
Have the Ca‑1 Form, the Notice Of Injury Form That\'s Completed In this
Case. The Ca‑1 Is Filled out on the Front by the Employee. He Also Has a
Witness Statement. Clearly the Guy Who Gave Him a Hard Time in the
Injury Was His Witness. It Is Then Given to You, the Supervisor, and You
Fill out the Back of That Form. Now, We\'re Going to Actually Go Through
an Exercise Here Using That Ca‑1 That You Saw up on the Screen That\'s
Also Part of the Information That Was Given to You and We\'re Going to
Assume That with One Exception That\'s The Only Information You Have.
The Exception to That Is a Medical Report That Shows That The Employee
Is Disabled. With That Exception We Are Going To Ask You to Look at That
Ca‑1 And Make Three Different Determinations in this Case. The First
Determination You Are Going to Make, Should You Controvert the Case? Is
this the Type of Case Where You Need to Disagree with or Doubt the
Validity of Claim? If So, Why. Explain Why You Are Doing That. The
Second Part of the Exercise, Should You Continue the Employee\'s Pay.
Remember, Controversion Is a Little Bit Different from the Decision to
Continue Pay. You Can Still Controvert a Case And Continue the
Employee\'s Pay. You Need to Make a Decision If You Should Continue the
Employee\'s Pay, And, If So, Again, Why. The Third Step, If You Continue
The Employee\'s Pay, What Pay Status Do You Put Him In? There Are
Several Different Possibilities That Occur Here But There Is Really Only
One Right Answer and You Need to Determine What the Employee\'s Pay
Status Should Be as a Result Of the Injury That You Have Just Witnessed
in this Demonstration. Back to Carolyn Now.

Burrell: We Will Now Give You Five Minutes to Complete Ralph\'s
Exercise. If Possible, Work with Someone Else at Your Site and See What
You Can Come up with. Good Luck!

Burrell: Welcome Back. We Hope You Came up with a Good Answer. Ralph, in
an Injury Such as Charlie\'s, Should this Case Be Controverted?

Slighter: Well, Keep in Mind The Principles I Talked about Before. This
Is a an Injury That Has to Arise in and out of the Course Of Employment.
I Think That\'s the Only Controversial Aspect of this Case That Might
Cause You to Wonder Whether You Should Controvert the Claim. The Other
Issues Are Pretty Clear‑cut. You Have a Witness to the Injury. Off Claim
Filed in the Timely Manner, He Had He Is a Federal Employee, and There
Is Medical Evidence Supporting the Injury. But There Is a Question That
Arises Because of the Horseplay. This Is Something That Arise Ins And
out of the Course of Duty. Even Though There Was this Underlying
Undercurrent of Playfulness Between These Two Individuals, Clearly the
Incident Happened While the Individual Was up Pulling this Box down and
on Top of this Trash Can. That\'s Something That Arose in And out of the
Course of Employment. So the Answer to the First Question, Should You
Controvert The Case, the Answer to That Should Be, No. This Is an Injury
That We at the Department of Labor Would Cover Under Workers\'
Compensation Purposes. So with That Kept in Mind, You Have a Second
Question That You Have to Answer, Should You Be Continuing That
Employee\'s Pay? And the Answer to That Yes, You Should Be Continuing
That Employee\'s Pay. That Employee Has Met All the Qualifications, this
Is a Traumatic Injury Filed Within 30 Days, et Cetera. So in this Case
Situation You Should Be Continuing That Employee\'s Pay. In Fact the
Answer to the Third Question Is Part of That Second One. What\'s the Pay
Status. The Answer Is Continuation of Pay, Because Even Though You Have
an Injury for Which the Employee Can\'t Work, He Doesn\'t Have to Take
His Sick Leave or His Annual Leave. In Fact, If You Notice from the
Notice of Injury Form, the Form Ca‑1, He Has Elected Continuation of
Pay. So You Put Him in a Continue Way Of Pay Status Starting the Day
After the Injury.

Burrell: Okay. Now That You Know the Process For Helping an Injured
Employee, Linda Will Cover BLM\'s New Return to Work Policy. Linda?

Sedbrook: Thank You, Carolyn. Today You\'ve Learned about Accident
Prevention and the Procedures for Dealing with on The Job Injuries. My
Objective Is to Familiarize You with BLM\'s Procedures for Returning
Employees to Work After They Have Sustained a Traumatic Injury or an
Occupational Disease and to Familiar You with the Bureau\'s Reporting
Requirements with Regard to OWCP. You May Hear Me You Use the Term He
and She and His and Her Referring to the Employee. As You Have Learned
When an Employee Sustains a Traumatic Injury on the Job, He Can Continue
to Receive His Salary For up to 45 Days. However, Our Goal Is to Return
The Employee to Work as Quickly As Possible. Hopefully Within a Day or
So. And Certainly Within the 45‑day Period. The Two Primary Reasons for
Setting this Goal Are, First, Let\'s Think of the Impact on the Employee
and the Important People in Their Lives. A Traumatic Injury Is a
Destabilizing Event. It Disrupts the Employee\'s Routine and the People
Closest To Them. Studies Have Shown That If an Employee Is out of Work
for 30 Days or Longer, She May Convince Herself That She Is Disabled and
Can Never Return to Work. Secondly, the Employee Is Still Your
Responsibility Because the BLM Is Continuing to Pay Her Salary. So in an
Effort to Contain Costs, it Is Important for to You Work with the
Employee And, If Necessary, the Doctor to Get The Employee Back to Work.
In an Effort to Assist the Employee and to Contain Costs, We Have
Established a Process For You to Follow. If You Will Remember, the
Employee must Deliver the Medical Documentation to You. The Medical
Documentation Is Basically the Ca‑17 or an Appropriate Narrative from
the Doctor. This Documentation must Be Delivered as Soon as Possible
Following the Doctor\'s Appointment. The Review Process That must Take
Place Is to Compare Side B Of the Narrative, Which Is the Part the
Doctor Completes, with Side A, the Part That You Completed. The Purpose
of this Review Is to Ensure That Medical Restrictions Are Compatible
with the Employee\'s Current Position. What Do You Do If You Find That
The Doctor\'s Restrictions Are Incompatible with the Employee\'s
Position? Let Me Give You an Example. Sara Jane a Natural Resource
Specialist Who Broke Her Leg on The Job. Sara Works Primarily Outdoors.
Her Duties Include Walking over Uneven Terrain. Because of Sara\'s
Broken Leg, The Physical Requirements of Her Job Make it Impossible for
Her To Perform Her Duties. However, It\'s Clear from the Medical
Documentation That Sara Can Perform Duties of a More Sedentary Nature.
You Now Need to Explore the Available Opportunities for Restricted Duty.
Remember, Sara Is a Good Employee Who Wants to Continue Contributing to
the BLM Mission In Someway. Sitting at Home Is Not Her Style And
Considering the Economic Outlay of Funds, It\'s Not in Your Interests to
Let Her Do So. To Determine the Type of Duties Which You Can Offer to an
Employee Such as Sara, There Is A Four‑step Process. The First Step We
Have Already Completed. We Have Determined That Sara Cannot Perform the
Duties of Her Position. Now for the Second Step: Can The Duties of the
Present Position Be Temporarily Modified? Remember, Sara Is a Natural
Resource Specialist Who Works Outdoors and Is Required to Walk Over
Uneven Terrain. If You Believe That You Can in Someway Modify the Duties
to Accommodate Sara\'s Physical Limitations, You Should Do So. You Are
Required to Commit the Modifications to Writing and Make the Offer to
the Employee. If Your Determination Is You Cannot Modify Her Current
Duties, Then Look Around Your Immediate Office and Determine If Other
Work Can Be Assigned. Which Is the Third Step in the Process. The Work
You Identify Does Not Have to Constitute a Position in The Traditional
Sense. By this I Mean the Duties You Identify Do Not Have to Go Through
the Normal Position Classification Process. So Don\'t Be Concerned If
the Duties You\'ve Identified Are Not Commensurate with the Employee\'s
Grade Level. Remember, this Is Only a Temporary Arrangement. Our Goal Is
to Get the Employee Back to Their Position of Record As Quickly as
Possible. What Happens If You Cannot Locate Work Within Your Immediate
Office? Immediately Contact Your OWCP Coordinator. The Coordinator Will
Work with You in Locating Work in Another Office. A Tip for the OWCP
Coordinators Is to Plan Ahead and Have Restricted Duty Assignments
Already Identified. We All Know of Those Offices That Always Seem to
Have More Work than They Can Handle. In Sara Jane\'s Case, You Decided
You Had No Available Work. You Contacted the OWCP Coordinator to Ask for
Help in Finding Work for Sara to Do. The Coordinator Found That the
Office of Irm Needed Someone to Do Receptionist Type Duties, Such as
Answering the Telephone, Greeting and Directing Visitors. This
Constitutes a Bona Fide Job Offer. Now for the Paper Work. You must
Commit the Offer to Writing. We Have Developed a Very Simple Form for
Doing this. It\'s Called the Restricted Duty Assignment Offer. We\'ve
Included a Copy of this in Your Viewer Packet. It Consists of the
Duties. They Should Be Very Precisely Described, I Might Add. You must
List the Physical Requirements and Any Other Special Workload Demands or
Unusual Working Conditions. Describe Them Specifically. It\'s Very
Important That the Duties and Physical Requirements Are Adequately
Described, Because this Document May Serve As a Basis for Other Actions
Down the Road. Another Requirement Is That You Include the
Organizational and Geographical Location of the Job And the Date the
Assignment Is To Begin. Finally, the Form Provides a Place for the
Employee to Accept Or Reject the Offer. If the Employee Should Refuse
The Offer, must Advise Her That Continuation of Pay Will Be Terminated
as of the Date That She Declined the Offer. If You Do Receive a
Declination, Immediately Provide Your OWCP Coordinator with the Refusal.
The Coordinator Will Notify the Department of Labor by Sending Them a
Copy of the Signed Refusal. Carolyn, That\'s the Basic Process for
Returning an Employee to Work.

Burrell: Okay, Thank You, Linda. Basically If an Employee Does Refuse
the Job Assignment They Would Be Given If They Can\'t Return to Their
Original Job, They Will Be Terminated.

Sedbrook: Well, Hopefully by The Time Employee Goes Through All of the
Forms They Understand The Consequences of Their Action, and That\'s Why
We Prepared That One Check List for Employees to Go Through, So That
They Can Understand All of These Requirements, But, Yes, Their Benefits
Could Be Terminated If They Do this.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. To Illustrate All of this Now, Let\'s See What
Happened to Charlie When He Met with His Supervisor the next Day to
Discuss His Job Stat Us A. ‑‑ Status.

Charlie, How You Feeling?

Well, I Guess Better, but After You Dropped Me off at the Doctor\'s, I
Ended up Getting in Traction All Afternoon. I\'m Kind of Sore.

I See. What Did You Find out?

Well, Here\'s That Ca‑17 You Wanted Me to Bring Back. The Doctor Told Me
That I Really Couldn\'t Return to the Warehouse. Maybe I Should, You
Know, Go Home and Use Continue Way of Pay To Get Better. What Do You
Think?

Why Don\'t You Sit Back and Relax and Let Me Review the Form And Then We
Can Talk about It.

Okay. Well, I See the Doctor Says That You Can\'t Return to Your Regular
Job Because of Your Back Injury. But He Does Say That You Can Work for
Four Hours If You Sit For the Whole Period of Time. So I Think We Can
Accommodate That. You Can Work for Four Hours in The Morning and Then in
the Afternoon You Can Go Home, and We Will Put You on Continuation Of
Pay for Four Hours So You Won\'t Have to Take Any Sick Leave.

Okay.

We Can Accommodate That. Do You Remember Julie?

Uh‑huh.

Ever since Julie Left, We Have Been Unable to Do ‑‑ Get Her Work Done in
a Timely Manner, and So We Have Quite a Backlog. In Fact, We Have about
2500 Forms That Need to Be Input into The Computer.

Wow!

If I Remember Correctly, You Attended Computer Training Last Year and
You Were Really Good in The Training. So I Don\'t Think There\'s Going
To Be Any Problem in Assigning You That Work and Your Being Able to Get
it Accomplished. So Why Don\'t We Make That Your Assignment for the next
Several Weeks until You Recover?

Well, I\'m Really Not Looking Forward to Sitting at a Desk for Four
Hours in Front of That Computer Terminal. What Would Happen If I Refuse?

Well, I Hope You Don\'t Because If You Do Refuse, I Will Have to
Terminate Your Continuation of Pay.

Hmmmm. Well, Sounds Better Already. I Think That I\'ll Accept It, Then.
But I\'ll Sure Look Forward to Going Back into That Warehouse Job. I
Sure Will like That in Comparison.

Wonderful. Why Don\'t I Formalize the Offer And Give it to You Tomorrow
Morning, and You Can Sign off on And it Return it to Me. By the Way, I
Will Need Progress Reports from Your Doctor. So Every Time You Have a
Doctor\'s Appointment, Let Me Know and I Will Complete a Ca‑17 And Give
it to You and You Can Take it to Your Doctor.

Okay.

Think of it this Way, the Sooner You Get Well, the Sooner You Can Return
to Your Job.

Good. I\'ll Do That.

Great. Why Don\'t We Meet in Julie\'s Old Area Tomorrow Morning and We
Can Get You Started.

Okay. See You Men.

All Right.

Burrell: So You Can See, it Is a Fairly Simple Process to Help an
Injured Employee to Get Back to Work with Within a Reasonable Period of
Time. In Most Cases, this Is Pretty Close to What Would Happen Between
an Employee and Their Supervisor. Now, Linda, What Would Happen If An
Employee Were Injured to Such An Extent That They Could Not Return to
Their Original Job?

Sedbrook: If the Doctor Determines That the Employee Can Never Return to
His Permanent Position of Record, You Should Work with Your OWCP
Coordinator To Reassign the Employee to a Position Consistent with the
Physical Limitations Stipulated By the Doctor. The Position That You and
the OWCP Coordinator Identify for Reassignment May Be at a Lower Grade.
If this Should Happen, the Employee Will Be Entitled to Salary
Retention. I Would Be Remiss If I Didn\'t Spend Some Time Talking to You
About Occupational Disease. Let\'s Use the Example of Carpal Tunnel
Syndrome Brought about by Repetitive Motion in the Operation of a
Computer Keyboard. When an Employee Makes a Claim, The Process Will Be
Similar to That of an Employee Making a Claim Based on a Claim for
Traumatic Injury. However, There Are Some Important Differences That You
Should Be Aware Of. The Employee Is Not Entitled to Continuation of Pay.
Because of This, the Time Frame In Which You Can Work with the Employee
and Her Doctor to Find Restricted Duty Is Limited. Once the Claim Is
Accepted by The Department of Labor, the Procedures for Placing the
Employee on Restricted Duty Differs. We Will Be Discussing this Later. I
Would like to Emphasize That Injured Employees Will Be Offered
Restricted Duty or Reassignment If They Are Able to Work. We Are No
Longer Allowing Employees to Go on OWCP Because They Were Injured on the
Job and For Whatever Reason We Did Not Make Any Efforts to Place Them.
Bringing the Employee Back to Work Is Not Only in the Best Interests of
the BLM, but of the Employee, Even If It\'s Only Part Time. In Those You
Be Instances Where The Severity of the ‑‑ in Those Instances Where the
Severity of Injury Where an Employee Is Not Able to Return to Work
Within The 45‑day Period, Continuation Of Pay Ceases. What Happens Is
the Employee Files a Claim with Department of Labor for Compensation of
Lost Wages. His Claim for Medical Benefits And Compensation Rests with
the Department of Labor. However, You must Remember, the Department of
Labor Has Not Taken over Your Responsibility. The Employee Is Still on
the BLM Rolls, and You as the Supervisor Are Still Responsible for
Trying To Return this Employee to Work. The Process for Returning this
Employee to Work Is Different From What I Just Described for The First
45 Days. Now the Department of Labor Is Involved. The Procedures Which
You Should Use Are, First, Maintain Contact With the Employee. Find out
How He Is Doing. Remember, He\'s Still Our Employee. Second, on a
Regular Basis, You Should Request That Your OWCP Coordinator Obtain
Medical Information from the Department Of Labor or the Physician So
That You Can Determine the Employee\'s Fitness for Duty. If Your OWCP
Coordinator Is Unable to Obtain Adequate Information, You Can Order the
Employee to Go for a Fitness for Duty Examination with a Physician
Collected by Your Office. If the Examination Findings Conflict with the
Findings of The Employee\'s Doctor, Then the Findings Should Be Sent to
the Department of Labor along with The Request for an Independent
Medical Exam. If the Medical Documentation Reveals That the Employee Can
Return to Restricted Duty, Then The Supervisor and the OWCP Coordinator
Should Work with the Department of Labor to Return The Employee Back to
Work as Quickly as Possible. This Same Procedure Would Be Used for an
Employee with an Occupational Disease Once the Claim Was Accepted by the
Department of Labor. Basically You Will Need to Prepare a Description of
the Duties Using the Restricted Duty Form, Submit the Form to the
Department of Labor, along with A Letter Explaining the Situation. After
the Employee Has Received Pay Compensation for One Year And it Becomes
Evident That the Employee Is Unable to Return to Work, the Employee
Should Be Counseled by the OWCP Coordinator Regarding Her Options. They
Are: She Can Return to Work but must Have a Release From the Doctor
Stating Any Physical Limitations. The Employee Also Has the Option Of
Applying for Disability Retirement. This Information must Also Be
Provided in Writing. If It\'s Determined That the Employee Will Not Be
Returning To Work, Action Should Be Taken To Remove the Employee for
Such Reasons as Inability to Perform The Duties of the Position. If the
Employee Fully Recovers Or Partially Recovers after the One‑year Period
the Employee Is Entitle the to Priority Consideration ‑‑ Entitled to
Priority Consideration Provided He Applies to Opm Within 30 Days After
Compensation Ceases. This Applies to Permanent Employees Only. Carolyn?

Burrell: So, Linda, If the Employee Was Determined Later on That They
Could Return to Work, Either in a Part‑time Status or Full‑time Status,
Where Would They Be Entitled to Priority Consideration? Would it Be
Government‑wide or Be Only in BLM or Department of Interior?

Sedbrook: Our Obligation Is To Offer Them Priority Consideration Within
the Bureau Of Land Management.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. I Would like to Mention We Will Be Going to
the Phones Again in About Five Minutes for Our Last Question and Answer
Segment. So If You Have a Question or Comment for Our Panel, this Would
Be a Good Time to Start Dialing or Send Us a Fax. Back to You, Linda.

Sedbrook: Good Management Practices Dictate That We Periodically Contact
Department Of Labor to Get the Latest Medical Status and to Work with
Department of Labor Vocational Rehabilitation to Place Them Either
Within or Outside of BLM. As You Know, the BLM Continues To Pay for
Their Medical and Compensation Costs. So Work with Your OWCP Coordinator
to Keep Abreast of The Medical Status of Former Employees and Make
Efforts to Get Them Placed. And Now Our Dirty Little Secret\... As
Congress Really Begins to Scrutinize Benefit Programs, the BLM Has
Approximately 144 Long‑term Cases on the Rolls. Over the Years, These
Cases Should Have Been Managed. We Frankly Didn\'t Do Our Job. But All
of That Is about to Change. I Have a Confession to Make\... I Have Been
in Human Resources For Many Years. Until We Started Looking into OWCP, I
Did Not Realize How Much Was Involved. As a Result of this Effort to
Develop a Model Program, My Eyes Have Been Opened. I Can Assure You That
My Office Has Changed the Way We Do Business. It\'s No Longer Just a
Paper Work Exercise. We Are Going to Establish a Team To Develop a
Strategy to Review These Approximately 144 Cases. We Will Be Working
Closely with The Department of Labor to Make Every Effort to Place These
Employees. In Those Cases Where Placement Is Possible, We Will No Longer
Be Obligated to Pay Compensation Costs. In Other Cases We May Be Able to
Reduce the Compensation Costs. If the Department of Labor Can Place an
Employee in a Position Which Pays less than What the Employee\'s Former
Job Currently Pays, the Department of Labor Will Make up the Difference.
Once These Cases Have Thoroughly Been Reviewed, the Responsibility for
Managing the Cases from Here on out Will Be Yours. The Last Thing I Am
Going to Talk to You about Is the Reports Which Are Required by the
Department of Labor and the BLM. The First Is the Chargeback Report.
This Is a Report from the Department of Labor Which Outlines Our Medical
and Compensation Costs. This Report Is Sent to the State And Center
Offices Quarterly for Verification That the Employees Listed Really
Belong to the BLM. If There Is a Discrepancy, You Need to Have the OWCP
Coordinator with the Respective Department of Labor District Ask Them to
Remove the Person from The Rolls. You Can Also Use the Report for Other
Purposes Such as Requesting That the OWCP Coordinator Get Updated
Medical Information on Employees Who Are Still on the Long‑term Rolls.
The Second Report Is the Continuation of Pay Report. The State Centers
and the Washington Office Also Receive a Continuation of Pay Report on a
Quarterly ‑‑ Continuation of Pay Report on a Quarterly Basis. This
Report Will Be Need to Be Reviewed to Determine the Number Of Employees
Who Have Returned To Work and in What Capacity. Hopefully If the Process
Works And as We Have Envisioned It, There Will Be Very Few Employees On
Continuation of Pay Because We Will Have Offered Them Restricted Duty
Almost Immediately after the Injury Has Occurred or Reassigned Them to a
Position Consistent with the Doctor\'s Medical Restrictions. Back to
You, Carolyn.

Burrell: Thank You, Linda. We\'ve Come to the Point in Our Broadcast
When We Will Be Taking Telephone Calls and We Will Be Responding to
Faxes. We Have a Number of Faxes That We Have Received from the States
And from Our Field Areas and We Will Get to as Many of Them Today as We
Can. But, Again, I Would like to Assure You That Any That We Do Not Get
a Chance to Respond to Today, Someone Will Get Back to You after the
Broadcast. We Do Have a Question in from Moore, Oklahoma, and the
Question Is: Can We Get a Transcript of Ralph Slighter\'s Presentation.
I Would like to Let Everyone Know a Transcript of the Entire Broadcast
Today Will Be Available on the Internet at NTC\'s Home Page Later on
this Week. So We Will Give You the Address Of the Home Page Later in the
Broadcast. All Right. A Question for Ralph. This Is from Roswell, New
Mexico: Can an Injured Employee Be Referred Directly to a Chiropractor
Using the Ca‑16 or Does a Medical Doctor Have to Refer the Employee to
the Chiropractor?

Slighter: Well, with a Chiropractor There Are Some Limitations
Pertaining to an Injury. The Immediate Answer Is, Can You Use a Ca‑16 to
Refer the Employee to the Chiropractor. Does Not Have to Go to a Medical
Doctor First. However, Chiropractor Ins Our System, the Way the Congress
Amended the Law in 1974, They Can Only Treat You for Spinal Conditions,
Back, Neck and So Forth. You\'re Specifically Limited to Manual
Manipulation of the Spine As Demonstrated by X‑ray to Exist. So Assuming
That\'s an Injury to The Spine, You Can Use the Ca‑16 To Refer Someone
Directly to a Chiropractor. It Does Not Have to Go Through a Medical
Doctor.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. We Do Have a Caller on Hold. That\'s Darrell
in Worland. Hi, Darrell. Darrell, Hi, How Are You?

Caller: I\'m Doing Just Fine. I Had One Question I Wanted to Ask,
Though, and Basically I Wanted to Say Thanks to All You For Doing Such a
Good Job So Far, but with the Example That Was Used in the Warehouse, to
Me It Appeared That There Was Negligence and Misconduct on the Part of
Those Two Employees and Why Wouldn\'t We Hold Them Accountable for Their
Misconduct Rather than Paying for the Injuries? Wouldn\'t We Follow up
with Some Kind of a Conduct Action to Correct That Inappropriate
Behavior?

Burrell: Thank You, Darrell. That\'s a Good Point.

Slighter: It\'s a Two‑part Question. I Am Going to Answer the First Part
and Then Turn it over to Linda for the Second Part, Because the Two‑part
Question Is, First of All, Should this Something Be Covered under
Workers\' Compensation? Then, Secondly, What Action Should Be Taken to
Prevent this Obvious Misconduct from Occurring Again. It Is True, That
There Is Some Question Because They\'re Involved in Horseplay and So
Forth That Should We Be Covering This in the First Place? Keep in Mind
the Original Answer That He Gave You Is That We ‑‑ We at the Department
of Labor Would Approve That Case Because The Incident as it Occurred Is
Something That Arose out of Job Factors. Keep in Mind Something Else I
Said, Too. There May Be Some Circumstances, And Altercations Is a Good
Example, Where We Approve the Claim Yet There Is Proper Disciplinary
Action on the Part Of the Agency, and That May Be Appropriate Here. But
from the Department of Labor\'s Perspective, Because the Injury Arose
out of Regular Conditioned of Employment, I.e., Pulling the Box Down, We
Would Cover It. But BLM May, Indeed, Take Some Disciplinary Action. I
Will Turn That Part of the Question over to Linda.

Sedbrook: I Am Glad You Picked up on That, Because I Have the Same
Reaction When I Saw the Clip And, of Course, the Supervisor Is
Responsible to Take Some Form of Disciplinary Action. Perhaps to Begin
With, You Know, We Call it Progressive Discipline. If the Indications Is
this Is a One‑time Event, Then Perhaps it Will Be a Counseling Session
of A Very Strong Nature. But You\'re Absolutely Right, We Are
Responsible in Preventing These Kinds of Things, and When Employees Do
Misbehave in the Workplace We Have to Remind Them That this Is Not
Acceptable, and We Start with Oral Discussions With Them and We Move up
the Ladder with More Severe Discipline. But I\'m Glad That You
Supervisors out There Were Observing That.

Burrell: Okay, Darrell, Thanks So Much for the Question.

Caller: Okay. Thank You.

Burrell: You\'re Welcome. We Have Another Fax Question in From Wyoming,
and That\'s from Carol Babcock, And, Ralph, this Question Is for You:
While an Employee Is Applying for Benefits, We Do Receive Copies Of
Correspondence on the Case. After the Office of Workers\' Compensation
Department of Labor Places Employees on Benefits, The Periodic Roll,
Most to All Of this Stops. How Do We Actively Manage the Case Then?

Slighter: Okay. It\'s True. That Is, Indeed, Part of Our Procedures, Is
That Once They Are on OWCP Periodic Rolls, a Lot of the Correspondence
Between Us and the Department of Labor ‑‑ at the Department of Labor and
the Agency Is Going to Slow Down, in Many Cases Cease. However, We Still
Notify BLM in Many Respects about What\'s Happening. Remember, Before We
Talked about The Chargeback Report, the Chargeback Report That Goes to
Agencies. We Send That to Agencies on a Quarterly Basis. We Also Will
Allow Agencies to Look at the Evidence That We Have. When I Say Look at
It, You Can Come into Any One of Our 12 District Offices and Look at the
Evidence We Have. One of the Things You Will Find Out Is an Eye Opener.
The Average Periodic Roll Case File We Have in Our District Office Is in
the Nature of Five, 600 Pages. We Are Not Talking about One or Two Pages
of Documents. Also If You Are Not Close to One Of the Offices, Can You
Request That Information in Writing. We Will Send it to You Consistent
with the Limitations Of the Privacy Act, Which Means That the Person Who
Is Getting That Information Needs to Have a Need to Know the Information
Contained Therein. But, That\'s Clearly Something Your Management Is
Going to Be In Contact with Us. Whether It\'s Calling Us up ‑‑ More
Often We Would Refer to That That Request in Writing. If You Call Us, We
Don\'t Really Know You\'re from BLM. Or Call in Advance and Ask for An
Appointment to Look at the Case File, Bring Identification, And We\'ll
Let You Look at the Documents That We Have. That\'s Probably the Best
Way That You Can Find out What\'s Happening, What We Are Doing as Far as
Asking for Current Medical Information and So Forth.

Sedbrook: I Would like to Add, Too, Carol, One of the Reasons Those 144
Cases I Talked About ‑‑ I Was Astounded That We Had That Many Long‑term
Old Cases out There Still Costing Us Money. So in Those 144 Cases,
We\'re Going to Establish a Team, and We Will Do That this One Time
Only. We\'re Going to Clear out That Backlog, Hopefully, We\'ve Got Our
Fingers Crossed, Going to Get a Group Together, Going to Go Through All
of Those Files. It Won\'t Be an Immediate Action Because, as Ralph Said,
Some of Those Files Are Voluminous. We Were Hoping by the Time of This
Broadcast, When We First Started This, That We Could Do That. When We
Saw the Amount of Material That We Have to Go Through Before We Can Do
This, We Knew it Was an Impossible Task. So We\'re Going to Work Very
Hard To Do That. It Probably ‑‑ in the next Six Months to a Year.

Burrell: We Have Another Question for Ralph and this Is From Don.
Following an Injury Can a Supervisor Require the Employee To See a
Doctor If the Employee Refuses to See a Doctor?

Slighter: There Is an Easy Answer to That, and the Easy Answer Is, No,
They Can\'t. We\'re a Free Country in the United States, and If You
Have, For Example, a Fairly Serious Injury and You as a Supervisor Feel
the Employee Can\'t Work, That\'s an Executive Decision. In Fact, under
Those Circumstances, You Still Could Not Require an Employee to See a
Doctor. Now, If You Determine from an Executive Standpoint That the
Employee Can\'t Work, You Can Require Him to See One of Your Physicians,
Someone That You Have Arranged, Before You Clear Him to Come Back to
Work. Again, That Then Becomes the Employee\'s Decision Whether or Not
He Wants to Come Back to Work, Because, Clearly, If He Is Not Coming
Back to Work, He Is Not Getting Paid. But, No, You Can\'t Require the
Employee to Be Seen. What You Can Do Is in Your Judgment, If You Feel
That the Employee Would Be a Danger, Either to Him or in Some Cases To
Other People, You Don\'t Want To Have Someone with a Broken Leg Driving
a Standard Truck, Standard‑shift Truck and under Those Situations, What
You Will Want to Do Is Make That Decision And Tell the Employee of Your
Decision and Then Can He Choose To Go or Not Go to a Doctor.

Burrell: Good. Another Question for You, Ralph: This Is from Fred Fisher
‑‑.

Slighter: Is Anybody Else Going to Get Questions Here?

Burrell: There Will Be Some Other People That Will Get Questions,
Believe Me. This Is from Fred Fisher from Ely, Nevada. Are General
Public\'s That Are Involved with BLM Always Considered a Federal
Employee And Entitled to Full Owc Been Others Fits Just as a Regular
Federal Employee? For Example, a Range Conservationist Picks up a
Rancher to Go Evaluate Maintenance Needs on a Particular Range
Improvement. En Route the Government Employee Has a Vehicle Incident
That Involves Injuries to the Rancher. Another Example, a Rancher Falls
And Break His Leg as a BLM Site That a BLMer Took Him To.

Slighter: to Answer That Question We\'re Going to Go Back To One of the
Original Requirements That We Talked About, and That Is the Issue of
Federal Employee. We Cover Civilian Federal Employees in the Performance
of Their Duties, and If You\'re Not A Federal Employee or Don\'t Have
Federal Employee Status in One Way, Shape or Form and I Am Going to Give
You an Exception In a Moment, by and Large the Answer Would Be No. So
the Citations You Just Gave In the Memorandum Having to Do With a
Rancher That Goes with a BLM Employee, He Would Not Be Covered for
Workers\' Compensation Purposes. Now, There Might Be a Tort Liability
Claim, and Clearly the Accident Investigation Needs to Proceed along
Those Lines Because There May Be, for Example, a Suit by the Rancher For
Damages, Whether That Be Personal Property Damages ‑‑ They Might Even Go
in the Rancher\'s Car, Owe Just Personal Injury Damages. But by and
Large Those Individuals Would Not Be Covered Under Workers\'
Compensation. The Exception Is with Volunteers. There Are Some Cases
Where There Are Individuals Who Are Volunteers on BLM Rangelands and So
Forth, and in Many Cases They Are Performing Work That Might Normally Be
Performed by BLM Employees, and They\'re Being Performed by Volunteers.
So Volunteers Do Have a Limited Coverage, Limited, I Say, They\'re Not
Entitled to Continuation of Pay, but Most of The Other Benefits, Which
Include Compensation of Wage Loss and So Forth They\'re Entitled To. Pay
Rate Might Be a Problem with Volunteers. You Can\'t Pay Them Three
Quarters of Nothing, So We Have To Determine Pay Rates, but by And
Large, Private Citizens Are Not Covered under the Workers\'
Compensation. They\'re Only ‑‑ Their Only Claim Would Be Through Tort
Liability.

Burrell: Thank You. We Have Another Question in Connection with
Volunteers and It Comes from George Ferrell in Boise, Idaho. George\'s
Question Is: We Have a Group Volunteer Agreement with a Local Elementary
School. Volunteers Are Covered under OWCP, Is That Correct?

Slighter: Yes, Volunteers Are Indeed Covered. Keep in Mind That the
Students Themselves Would Not Be Volunteers, But, for Example, People
Who Go with You to Take Them to a Field Trip, That Might An Example of a
Volunteer. Yes, Those People Do Have Certain Level of Coverage. There Is
a Minimum Payment They Might Get If We Can\'t Determine Pay Rate and
They Get Medical Coverage and So Forth.

Burrell: You Have Started to Answer a Part of the Second Part Of the
Question, Which Is: What Coverage Do the Students Have When
Participating in Field Trips That Are Sponsored by BLM That Their
Parents Have Given Their Written Permission for Them to Participate In?

Slighter: the Question of Whether You Are a Volunteer Is Are You
Performing Work That Normally Might Be Performed by The BLM. I Don\'t
Think You Can Say That Students Are under Those Circumstances. They
Themselves Would Not Be Considered Volunteers for Workers\' Compensation
Purposes. Again, the Chaperones Might Be Because it Might Be That BLM
Doesn\'t Have Enough Employees to Chaperone the Students Who Are There
and So They Get Volunteers To Help out. That\'s a Different Story. But
the Students Themselves Are Not, by and Large, Performing Work That
Might Normally Be Performed by BLM Employees and Under That Situation
They Wouldn\'t Be Covered.

Burrell: Although There Is a Group Volunteer Agreement with The
Elementary School, They Would Not Be Covered If They Were Injured on a
Field Trip?

Slighter: That\'s Correct.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. Another Faxed‑in Question. This Is for You,
Yogi. This Is from Elaine Biggs in Ol\' El Centro Area of California.
What about the Di‑134s for Nonemployees? On Busy Weekends We May Have
Dozens of Nonemployee Accidents. Will Supervisors Now Have Tine Put All
of These into the Internet?

Nielsen: That Is a Good Question. We Will Have, Just as We Do in The
Di‑134, an Area for Nonemployees. If an Accident Happens on BLM Lands,
Then We ‑‑ You Know, If We Can Get a Handle on Investigation of it ‑‑
Sometimes, like in Alaska, an Accident Could Happen on BLM Lands That We
Would Never Hear About. But If There Is an Accident That We Know About,
Yes, We Want to Follow up on That, Because That Does Have Tort Claim
Ramifications, Possibly We Need To Fix Something in Our Campgrounds, and
We Do Have an Area on the Internet ‑‑ I Mean, We Just ‑‑ If They Are a
Visitor To the Public Lands, We Will Have a Place to Input That.

Burrell: Okay, Good. We Have a Question in from Michelle Ryers in Our
Grand Junction District, Colorado. She Says Our Office Has Established
an Agency Provided Medical Care Agreement with Local Hospitals. Under
this Agreement We Send Employees Who Have Received Minor Injuries to
These Medical Providers, And, Therefore, Do Not Send Their Claims to
OWCP. If for Some Reason an Employee Who Received Care under this
Program Has a Recurrent Injury That\'s Associated with the Original
Injury and We Then Send This on to OWCP, Will this Affect the
Employee\'s Claims? Should We Submit the Original Ca‑1 and How Long Do
Agencies Have to Keep the Ca‑1 and Other Forms Relating to the Injuries?
What\'s the Period of the Record Retention?

Slighter: Okay. Actually There Are Three Parts And If I Don\'t Answer
All Three, Bring Me Back to Them. There Are Specific Time Frames That by
and Large the Agency Should Be Aware Of, but for Retaining the Ca‑1,
That Generally Isn\'t Going to Be a Problem Because a Ca‑1 That\'s Not
Submitted onto Us Is Sent Not to the Obf but to the Employee Medical
File, Not Necessarily to a Separate Workers\' Compensation System of
Files That You May Have at Your Agency but the Employee Medical File,
Because They May Have Problems Not Just Two or Three Weeks down the Road
but Two, Three Months, Years, Sometimes Decades down the Road They May
Have Problems with That. We Need to Be Able to Retrieve That Because the
Time Frame of Three Years That I Talked about That Begins to Run When
the Injury Occurs and Stops When the Employee Gives the Form to the
Supervisor. So in the Case of the Apmc, Agency Provided Medical Care, If
You, the Employee Have Filed That Form in a Timely Basis, You Don\'t
Submit it to Us Because There Is Apmc Coverage. If There Comes Problems
Late or Where You Have to Miss Time from Work or Have to Claim
Compensation, Then That Form Can, Indeed, Be Submitted to Us At the
Department of Labor, and There Is No Problems with the Time Limitation.
Under Those Circumstances, as Long as the Agency Puts That Ca‑1 in the
Employee Medical Folder, There Should Be No Problem in Retrieving It.

Nielsen: Also, I Would like To Comment a Little Bit on That That a ‑‑ If
They Have That Agency Provided Medical Care, If They Are Entering These
as Di‑134 Accidents, Then We Are Not Being Able as Safety Managers to
Help the Fire Program Find out Where Their Accidents Are Happening. We
Have No Way, Then, to Pull That Information Back out and I\'m Thinking
That Something Is Being Thought About, Being Done In That. But I Just
Hope That We Start Taking a Little Closer Look at That Agency Provided
Medical Care from a Safety Standpoint.

Burrell: Okay. Good. Another Question. This Is from the National
Training Center Here in Phoenix: What Happens If an Employee Is Injured
While in Travel Status At a BLM Office? Also, Which Office Is Actually
Responsible for Doing the Paper Work?

Slighter: That\'s a Two‑part Question. In Fact ‑‑ ‑‑ in Fact, the Second
Part I Will Turn Back Over to BLM, Probably to You, Linda, Because You
Will Know Basically How That Procedure Works, but from Our Procedure,
Once the ‑‑ the Performance of Duty Issue Comes Up, I Am Not an Arizona
Native, I Am from Virginia and I Am on Travel Status Here in Arizona
And, for Example, I\'m Right Now Clearly In the Performance of My Duties
While I\'m at the Seminar, but What about Afterwards, for Example,
Let\'s Say I Go to a Local Restaurant for Dinner Tonight, Am I Covered
under Workers\' Compensation? The Answer Is, Yes, I Am. For Activities
Which Are Reasonably Incidental to Your Travel Duty Status, Which
Includes Not Just Present at the Seminar but Commuting to and From the
Hotel and Meals ‑‑ They Don\'t Have to Be at the Hotel Itself, They
Could Be in the General Metropolitan Area, Leaving the Metropolitan
Area, On the Other Hand, Even Though You Are on Travel Duty Status,
Removes You from Coverage. People Get the Impression If They Are on
Travel Duty Status They Are Covered 24 Hours a Day. That Is Not True.
When You Have an Individual Who Is in Travel Duty Status Eights For All
Activities While on Tdy Or Travel Duty Which Are Incidental. If I Wanted
to Go Tomorrow to Do Sightseeing in Zone You A, about An Hour and a Half
or Two Hours From Here, I Would Remove Self From Coverage Because I Am
Removing Myself from the Metropolitan Area. The Decision Is Who Does the
Paper Work Is Not One We Get. That\'s an Internal BLM Issue. I Will Turn
That over to You, Lund You A.

Sedbrook: Well, If the Employee ‑‑ Let\'s Assume That The Employee in
this Injury ‑‑ The Supervisor May Not Be Notified Immediately Because
They\'re out of Town, But, Again, I Would Love, since I\'m a Supervisor
Myself, I Would Love To Get You Supervisors off the Hook, but
Unfortunately, as I Said, in Some of My Opening Remarks, You\'re Such a
Key Part Of this. You Probably Will Be One of the Very First People That
That Employee or Their Family Will Contact. So You Will Be Responsible
to Start Getting the Paper Work Moving. I Want to Point Out, Too, about
The OWCP Coordinator. If in the Panic of the Moment All of Those Forms
and Everything Float out of Your Mind, You Can Go to That OWCP
Coordinator in Your Safety Office or Your Human Resources Office and
They Will Help You Through this Situation with Your Employee.

Burrell: Thank You. So it Is the Supervisor of the Employee Who Actually
Fills out The Form?

Sedbrook: the Supervisor Starts the Paper Work. That\'s Correct. They
Should Be in Contact with The Employee If Possible.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. Another Question for You, Ralph, And this Is
from Mr. Abbott in The Carson City, Field Office. If I Represent the BLM
in an Evening Meeting Outside of Normal Duty Hours, Do I Have to Have
Prior Written Approval for Compensatory Time or Overtime in Order to Be
Covered If I\'m Injured?

Slighter: Actually We\'re Talking about Two Different Issues Here and I
Am Going to Be Real Careful Because We at the Department of Labor
Administer More than One Program. Clearly You Have Been Hearing About
the Injury and Workers\' Compensation Issue. We Administer Other
Programs, However. One Happens to Be Something Called the Fair Labor
Standards Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, Fl Sa If You Are Not
Used To It, it Says If You Work over 8 Hours, You Have to Be Paid
Time‑and‑a‑half Unless You Are An Fsla Exempt Individual. So My First
Answer to That Is That the Approval Process Would Depend by and Large If
You Are Flsa Exempt or Nonexempt. That\'s Not My Workers Comp Hat I\'m
Wearing When Giving You That Question. From the Department of Labor
Perspective We Are Going to Ignore the Fsla Restrictions. We Know
They\'re There, but If You Are Performing Work for the Agency, Even
Though You May Not Have Written Approval, and Whether You Need That or
Not Will Depend on Your Fsla Coverage, but Even If You Don\'t Have
Written Approval, If You Are Performing Work for the Agency You Are
Going to Be Covered under Workers\' Compensation. You Don\'t Have to
Have Something In Writing That Says You Are Authorized to Be in the
Office At 8:00 at Night. From the Fsla You May Have a Different Answer
Because There It May Be You Shouldn\'t Have Been Working and If Your
Agency Allowed It, You Should Have Been Paid Time‑and‑a‑half and Things
Like That. But from a Work You Are\'s Standpoint, If You Are Injured
Under Those Circumstances, You Would Be Covered.

Burrell: Linda, Do You Have Anything to Add to That?

Sedbrook: No, I Think He Covered It. We All Know We\'re Frequently Asked
to Give Presentations or Whatever after Duty Hours and If You Are an
Exempt Employee ‑‑ But I Think There Is Some Overtime Questions Involved
with That and for the Purposes of This Program, I Think Ralph Covered
It.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. We Do Have a Fax Question in From Bob Spain
and this Is for You, Linda and It\'s on Return to Duty. If the
Restricted Duty Assignment Offer Is Declined by The Employee What
Exactly Is Terminated? Sit the Benefits or the Job?

Sedbrook: Well, this Is a Complicated ‑‑ Always a Complicated Question
When Somebody Does Something That Isn\'t Quite Within What Our Game Plan
Is. What We Try to Do in Giving Them This Instruction Sheet That We Have
Developed Is to Make Sure They Understand That If They Refuse the ‑‑ Our
Offer of Light Duty, Then Their Continuation of Pay Can Be Terminated.
All Sorts of Things. But, as You Know, If You\'ve Been A Supervisor Any
Length of Time, It\'s Never Black or White. There\'s Always Grays. So
There Could Be Situations Where the Employee Is Saying the Light Duty
You\'re Offering Doesn\'t Quite Meet with What They Think Their Doctor
Is Saying, and So You May Have to Get Back with the Doctor and Talk to
Them to Get That Straightened out. Those Kinds of Things. So We Would
Love to See it Where It Was Just Simple and We Could Just Run it Through
but in Those Cases Where There Is a Refusal, You Are Going to Have to
Look Into the Reasons Why the Employee Is Refusing And, Again, It\'s
That Relationship Between The Supervisor and the Employee.

Slighter: I Would like to Add To That as Well. A Lot of this Will Depend
on the Specific Stage in Which You Are At. If It\'s During the
Continuation Of Pay Period, the Agency, as We Talked about Before, Does
Have The Right to Terminate Continuation of Pay. If It\'s Beyond That
Period, Any Termination Would Probably Be Done by Us at the Department
of Labor and We Would Determine Compensation. We Would Review the
Evidence to Determine If the Employee Has, Indeed, Refused a Suitable
Light Duty Offer. And If We Determine That They Have, We Would Terminate
Compensation Benefits. We Would Terminate the Job. That\'s the Agency\'s
Decision and That\'s Going Back to What Linda Said. But from Our
Perspective, If It\'s During the Continuation of Pay Period, You Would
Stop Continuation of Pay. If It\'s During the Compensation Period, We
Would Stop Compensation.

Burrell: We Have a Question In from Our Montana State Office, and It\'s
for Left‑hand You a and Ralph: Could You Please Talk a Little Bit about
How Long it Actually Takes to Make a Decision on a Claim, a Traumatic
Injury and Occupational Disease Claim.

Sedbrook: I Will Turn That Over to Ralph since Department Of Labor Gets
That.

Slighter: Yes, We Do. In Fact, as Was Properly Pointed Out, in the Facts
We Have Two Different Standards. When You Think about Traumatic
Injuries, There Are ‑‑ They\'re a Lot Easier to Make a Decision On. An
Incident That Occurs Instantaneously or Within One Working Day. Those
Cases Are Easier. From Our Claims Examiner\'s Standpoint We Have
Different Guidelines about How Quickly We Make a Decision. For Traumatic
Injures Ease Last Year We Measure How Quickly We Make a Decision Within
45 Days Of When the Claim Comes to Us. That Parallels the 45‑day
Continuation of Pay Period. Last Year That Was in the Neighborhood of
about 93%. Now, That\'s Not Much of a Consolation to the 7% Who Went
Well Beyond the 45 Days in Some Cases. But That Was Our Performance for
Fy‑96. Now for Occupational Diseases, They Are a Little More
Complicated. They Take a Lot Longer to Make a Decision Because There\'s
a Lot More Information Required. In Stress Cases, for Example, We
Require Statements from Both Sides, the Employee and the Supervisor and
Then We Ask the Other Part to Comment on What The Other One Has Said. A
Lot of Times a Second Opinion Medical Special Cyst Required. For
Occupational Diseases, Again, this Is Fy‑96 Numbers, We Made a Decision
on about 70% of Those Within Six Months of When They Came In. Clearly
That\'s a Longer Period Of Time, and You Can See That If You\'ve Gone
Without Pay for a Six‑month Period of Time, That Seems like an Awfully
Long Period. We Haven\'t Talked at All about One Possible Way of Getting
Around That. One of the Things That\'s Available to Employees Is That
They Use Their Own Leave During A Period of Time, and Then Have A Chance
to Repurchase That Leave. It\'s a Process Called Leave Buy Back. We Find
in Diseases Where it Takes a Long Time, a Lot of Employees Use the Sick
Oriole Leave and Repurchase the Leave In the Buy‑back Process. A Lot of
Types of Occupational Diseases Take less than Six Months. Repetitive
Motion Syndrome Which Is the Number One Type of Claim, It Doesn\'t Take
That Long. Average Adjudication Time, Decision‑making Time, Is about 90
Days for Those, a Lot Quicker Than Six Months. But Some Take Longer.
Stress and Heart Attack Are Probable Eat Two Most Difficult Types.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You, Ralph. We Have Another Question in to Respond
To. We Were Asked to Place a Long‑term OWCP Recipient. When the Person
Was Interviewed, It Was Evident That That Individual Had a Very Bad
Attitude and Would Do Anything That They Could to Avoid Employment. They
Even Made the Statement That They Would Take the Job Rather than Lose
Benefits but They Wouldn\'t ‑‑ That They Wouldn\'t Lose ‑‑ Excuse Me ‑‑
That They Would Rather Take the Job than Lose Benefits but They
Wouldn\'t Last. But They Wouldn\'t Last in the Job. They Didn\'t Want to
Hire this Individual Because the Manager Felt That it Would Be a
Disgruntled Employee. What Is the Responsibility of Management in a
Situation Such As this?

Sedbrook: Well, I Can Speak From the BLM\'s Perspective. You Will Have
Situations Where Perhaps the Employee That Is on OWCP Is Perhaps Not One
of Your Stellar Employees. Let\'s Just Say It. Those Things Do Happen. I
Mean, Injury Is Really Nondiscriminatory in That Way. It Doesn\'t Just
Get Good Employees. However, You Have to Separate That out from the OWCP
Situation. The Employee, must Go Through The Very Same Process. If You
Have a Job Offer and it Is Bona Fide, You Need to Make That Offer in
Good Faith and the Employee Recognizing They May Lose Their Been Face
May Take That Job. They May Come into the Workplace. They May Begin to
Be Disruptive Or Whatever the Situation or Just Not Performing the
Duties Of the Job. That Frankly Falls under Other Areas. Disciplinary.
Removal Actions. Those Kinds of Things. So What We\'re Asking ‑‑ I Would
Ask You to Do Today Is Separate Out. Treat Them like You Would a Good
Employee That You Had a Bona Fide Job Offer. Ralph, Do You Have Anything
to ‑‑.

Slighter: No, I Think That Basically Covers It. When You Have a
Situation Where The Employee Is Disgruntled, Many Times That Employee
Who Doesn\'t Want to Come Back to Work Is Going to Say I Am Not Going to
Take That Job under Those Circumstances Clearly We Would Terminate
Benefits If We Determined It\'s a Bona Fide Job Offer. If They Come Back
to Work and Have Problems, for Example, If They Are Disruptive, That\'s
a Personnel Issue and You Need to Deal with That Through the Personnel
Mechanism. I Don\'t Have Anything Really Substantive to Add.

Burrell: We Have a Question From Tracy in Vail, from Either You or
Ralph. How Do You Document an Exposure Incident, That Is, the Individual
Is Exposed to a Substance, but No Immediate Effects Are Evident. As a
Matter of Fact, the Effects Of the Exposure May Not Show up For a Year
or Longer down the Line. What Do We Do?

Nielsen: One of the Things That We Had an Experience with a Person That
Felt He Was Exposed To Asbestos and in Some of Our Old Barracks up in
Fair than Banks and We Documented on That A Ca‑1 and They Went to the
Doctor and There Was No Obvious ‑‑ Any Immediate Things, and They Did
Put it in His Medical File and Then I Think He Sued The Government for
Several Million Dollars, but ‑‑ Because He Hadn\'t Had Any Evidence of
That Happening Yet That Was Worked Through. I Don\'t Know. But We
Started by Putting It, Ralph, in the a Ca‑1 ‑‑.

Slighter: I Hope It\'s a Ca‑2.

Nielsen: Yes.

Slighter: That\'s the Proper Procedure. If You Have a Situation That You
Have Documented Where the Employee Is Trying to Put down In Writing That
this Has Occurred, You File a Ca‑2 for Occupational Disease and File it
Away in the Medical Folder. If There Is Problems Later On, With the
Asbestos Case, for Example, Your Typical Latency Period Is about 20 to
25 Years. Effects Don\'t Show up until Significantly Later. As Long as
it Is Documented, the Time Frame Begins to Run When The Injury Has
Occurred, the Exposure, and End When You Give The Form to the Supervisor
or an Occupational Diseases When You Have a Job‑related Condition. So
the Time Limitations Have Been Met and That\'s If You Fear Exposure but
There Is No Physician Kill Disability Causing to You Miss Time from
Work. You File it and it Goes in the Employee Medical Folder. Unless
There Are Problems Later On, There May Not Be Problems Later On, Then
That Goes in the Employee Medical Folder.

Burrell: We Have a Question From Ron in Nevada. We Had a Recent Case
Involving An Employee. The Claim Was Accepted by OWCP. OWCP Paid Part of
an X‑ray Bill. With No Explanation as to Only Why Part of the X‑ray Bill
Was Paid, and I Have Been Trying to Get an Explanation. The Provider
Wants an Explanation. Do You Have Any Suggestions?

Slighter: Yes. My Suggestion Would Be, in Fact, If It\'s Nevada, the
District Office There Is Our Office in San Francisco. They Should Be
Probably Contacted. There Would Be Two Major Reasons Why We Would Only
Pay Part of a Bill: First of All, We Talk About Our Fee Schedule. With
That Fee Schedule Reduction, We Send Notice Why it Was Reduced. It\'s
Not Sent to the Employee, Not Sent to the Agency, Mostly Because of
Paper Work. We Issue about Three Million Payments Each Year and Clearly
That Type of Duplication Would Be Unnecessary Government Paper Work. But
We Send it to the Doctor. So We Tell the Doctor We Reducing the Bill
from 200 to 150. The Second Reason Might Be Dual Services. Let\'s Say
That the X‑ray Was Two Views Lower Spine and Three Views Right Arm, and
the Bill Was for \$300, 150 for Each. If We Paid 150 ‑‑ We Just Picked
Up One, We Might Have Picked up One of the Services When We Should Have
Picked up Both. Because We Didn\'t Reduce the 150, We Wouldn\'t Send out
a Reduction Notice. It Turns out That in That Case It Might Have Been
Our Error in Not Picking up the Second Service and That\'s Why in That
Case We Suggest the Providers Contact Our District Office. In Fact, We
Have in San Francisco, in All Our District Offices, an Automated System
Where the Provider Can Go in There, Key in the Provider Social Security
Number and Find Out about Payment of Bills, When They Were Paid and for
What Reasons And, If That\'s Not Sufficient Through the Voice Mail They
Can Actually Contact One of the People in the District Office and Find
out Why The Bill Wasn\'t Paid. That Would Be My Suggestion in This Case.

Burrell: I Am Sure If You Don\'t Get a Good Answer from the Office
Located Close to You, You Can Call Ralph in Washington. We Have Another
Question from Elaine Briggs in El Centro, California. This Also Is for
You, Ralph. An Employee Is Exposed or Employees Are Exposed to Toxins,
Carcinogens, and That Was in Connection with Extinguishing a Barrel
Fire. Only Finds out after the Fact They Could Have Been Exposed. We\'re
Told to Fill out a Ca‑1 But Not to Require That They See A Physician.
Will That Do? Will the Department of Labor Accept That.

Should They Do More?

Slighter: Probably You Have a Situation Where the Employee Would Fill
out the Ca‑1 and Not Submit it to the Department of Labor Because the
Criteria for Submission to the Department of Labor, Lost Time or Medical
Expense. If Neither One of Those Applies, You\'re Documenting the
Condition, You May Not Know for Example There Were Toxic Fumes In the
Fire. You Document by Filing the Ca‑1. If the Employee Requires Medical
Treatment or Lost Time from Work, Then That Ca‑1 Gets Submitted to Us.
But If They\'re Just Documenting What Happened or What May Have
Happened, They Don\'t Even Know In Many Cases That There Was Toxic
Exposure, That, Again, Would Just Be Put in the Employee\'s Medical File
and If There Is Problems Later on it Would Be Submitted to Us at the
Department of Labor.

Nielsen: One Other Thing, Too, If That Employee Happened To Have Been on
a First‑response Team, He May Be under Medical Surveillance and If There
Was an Exposure, Then the Agency Would Send Them to Get Their ‑‑ to the
Doctor, of Course, Filling out The Ca‑1. You Wouldn\'t Expect OWCP to
Pay For That. But Being under the Medical Surveillance Program, Then We
Would Take Care of That.

Burrell: Okay. We Have a Question in from the Yuma Field Office and the
Question Is: Does BLM Have Access to the Aqs, Which Is the Agency Query
System, on the Internet? If So, How Do We Get a Password To Interact and
Query Directly To OWCP? This Is from Rose Perunda. Modern Technology Is
Wonderful Stuff. One of the Things We Have Is Through a Series of
Passwords, There\'s a Couple Different Ones, The Agency Can Have Access
to Case Data on a Case‑by‑case Basis. Now, Within the Agency That\'s
Fairly Restricted, but Clearly There Are Some Privacy Act Issues Here.
We Want to Make Sure the Individual Who Is Reviewing Has A Need to Know
the Information Contained Therein. So What We Have Started, at Least
from the Beginning, to Filter out That Possibility Is That We\'re Saying
That BLM, Indeed, Can Have Aqs, Agency Query System Access, but It\'s
Going to Be from the Headquarters Level and If BLM Is Delegating That
out to the Fields, That They Are Going to Do That from the Headquarters
Level. So, for Example, There Is about Four or Five Different Codes,
Chargeback Codes, Applicable Only for BLM, and Someone from BLM
Headquarters Could Have Access to That Data, and Then on An Individual
Case‑by‑case Basis Give That Access to Those People In the District
Office Who Have A Need to Know Because They Would Know If, for Example,
a Supervisor Would Have Need to Know or a Second‑line Supervisor Or the
OWCP Coordinator. So There Is an Agency Query System up and Running.
It\'s Been up and Running for About Three Months. But from BLM\'s
Perspective, We\'re Giving That Not to the State Offices or the Field
Offices but to BLM Headquarters, And BLM Will Then Make a Decision as to
How That Gets Disseminated to the State Offices or Field Offices or
Whatever. It\'s a Neat System If You Have Ever Seen it Working. It
Really Works Well. We Have Another Fax for Yogi out Of New Mexico State
Office. If Supervisors Are Going to Enter Accidents into Smis via
Internet, What Is the Process to Establish Supervision Accounts And
Profiles on the Systems?

Nielsen: Well, If I Understand the Question, I Would Think That ‑‑ We
Get out of Papers Right Now the Designation As to Whether a Person Is a
Supervisor. But Now That We\'re Doing Much More with a Lot less
Supervisors And That Span of Control Is Such That in Some Instances a
Person That Is a Team Lead Might Have The Responsibility for Five or
Since People, the Bureau Is Going to Have to Find Out, and They Haven\'t
at this Point, a Way to Designate Those People Who Will Be Able to Go
into That Particular Program, If That\'s What I Understand the Question
Meaning. Was There Two Parts to That or ‑‑.

Burrell: How Do We Establish The Spur ‑‑ Supervision Accounts And How Do
We Profile the System?

Nielsen: I Don\'t Know Quite Know What We Mean by Profile the System.

Sedbrook: Maybe They Are Talking about How Do We Get Access or Set up an
Account So We Can Get into It.

Nielsen: I See. At this Point the Safety Managers Can Go and Retrieve
Accidents after the Safety Specialists Have Okayed Them to Go down to
Denver, and They\'re Working All this out and Hopefully Before Too Long
We\'ll Be Able to Also Generate Most of The Ca‑1 That Will Be Submitted.
One of the Questions That Also Came in and I Will Throw this In, It\'s
Appropriate, Why Don\'t They, You Know, Make the Ca‑16 And Some of These
Other Reports Interactive or at Least ‑‑ What Do You Call it When
They\'re on ‑‑ You Know, a Disk or When Can You Do it Technologically. I
Think All That\'s in the Works From What I\'m Hearing, but I Know the
Ca‑1 Is for Sure.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You. This Question Is for Linda and It\'s from
Wanda Dikeman in the Wyoming State Office. What Procedures Does a
Supervisor Take to Remove an Employee from the Agency Rolls Once an
Employee Has Been Approved for Compensation for Permanent Disability?
That\'s One Question. The Second Question Is: What Is The Maximum Amount
of Leave Without Pay That BLM Can Approve Due to an OWCP Claim?

Sedbrook: Well, You\'re Picking on Me Today. It\'s Good to Hear from
Wyoming Always. The First Question Is on the ‑‑ She\'s Asking about How
Do You Remove Someone from the Rolls And I Am Sorry, I Didn\'t Hear The
End of That.

Burrell: What Procedures Does A Supervisor Take to Remove an Employee
from the Agency Rolls Once an Employee Has Been Approved for
Compensation for Permanent Disability.

Sedbrook: as You Know, There Is a Whole Process You Go Through When an
Employee Makes a Claim for Disability Retirement. There\'s a Lot of
Paper Work Involved. They Fill All of That out. And at the Present Time
That They\'re Accepted for That, They\'re Essentially Receiving Their
Disability Checks from Opm, and Frankly It\'s Very Similar to Other
Kinds of Retirement Benefits That Employees Get. Basically the Employee
Is in the Process All the Way Applying and All of That That It\'s Just
like Applying for Other Kinds Retirement Benefits. Unfortunately It\'s
Disability Is The Reason You\'re Getting Retirement Benefits.

Slighter: for Someone Who Has Had a Job‑related Injury in Those
Circumstances, They Actually May Apply for Both at The Same Time. They
May Apply for Retirement And Workers\' Compensation and in That Case
They Then Get an Election. They Have a Choice of Which One They Want. In
Fact, If You Have a Situation Where an Employee Is Receiving
Compensation from Department of Labor on the Basis of Permanent
Benefits, You Will Usually Terminate Them after a Year, as Linda Talked
about Before, for Reasons like Inability to Perform the Duties of the
Position. Reason Is after Year Is Because If They Come Back Within a
Year You Have to Take Them Back. Sometimes They Don\'t Apply for
Disability Retirement. They Have this Concept Maybe They Will Be Coming
Back to Work In 5 to 10 Years. You May Have to Take an Adverse Action
Against That Employee. That\'s an Agency Discretionary Thing. In Doing
So, Keep in Mind the Employee Does Usually Have a Choice Between Retire
Ment and Compensation. Now There Is a Second Part to That Question.

Burrell: the Second Part to The Question Is: What Is the Maximum Amount
of Leave Without Pay That BLM Can Approve Due to An OWCP Claim?

Sedbrook: Due to an OWCP Claim\... Leave Without Pay ‑‑

Slighter: My Guess Would Be a Year.

Sedbrook: Normally What I Would Do, If I Got a Claim like That, I Would
Treat it like Any Other Leave Without Pay Claim ‑‑ Or Request for Leave
Without Pay, and I Reviewed and it Decided, Yes, the Employee Should Be
Put on Leave Without Pay. It Usually Is That Which They Would Earn
Within a Year. Ralph Is Absolutely Right. I\'ll Look into That, Though,
but That Would Be My Answer off the Top of My Head. I Have Never Had
That Occur.

Burrell: Okay. Thank You, Wanda for Your Questions. This Is for Yogi and
I Think Yogi Was Beginning to Answer a Part of this Before. This Is from
Ray in New Mexico. Two Questions: Number One, Why Automate Only the
Di‑134. I Should Say It\'s a Two‑part Question. Two Parts Tight. The
First Part: Why Automate Only the Di‑134? Why Not Also Automate the
Ca‑1, The Ca‑16 and I Guess the Ca‑17? Seems as If, Though, Smis Is
Designed Only to Automate the Report of Accident/incidents. Is this
Correct? That\'s the First Part of the Question. Would You like to
Respond to That?

Nielsen: Yes, That\'s an Excellent Question, and We\'re Just New on this
Internet Stage Right Now, and the Ca‑1 Is Being Generated. You See, the
Di‑134 Is a Gathering of the Facts of the Accident and While We Gather
Those, a Lot of the Very Same Things We Report on the Di‑134 Is Reported
on the Ca‑1. They Didn\'t ‑‑ People Were Thinking, and They Were
Attempting and Have Attempted to Fill Both of Those Reporting
Requirements with the Same One‑time Shot, and I Can See in The Future
That the Ca‑16, et Cetera, since They Do Involve Doctors and Other
People Outside The Bureau, Might Be Just a Little More Difficult, but it
Probably Won\'t Be That Much More Difficult, and I See That in the
Future. If, in Fact, the Internet Isn\'t Up and Running Right Away,
Which I Think We\'re Looking Another Month or So down the Line, We Can
Play with it Now, We Can Put Other Things in It, but the Ca‑1 Is Also
Being Generated. Right Now Part of it Is Just Falling on the Floor, but
Sooner Or Later it Will All Come Together for Us and it Will Be a Much
More Efficient System.

Burrell: Good. The Second Part Is from the Records Side of the House:
Have The Records Folks Bought off on This System? And Is There a Systems
Notice And Everything?

Nielsen: Well, I Don\'t Know About the Records Side ‑‑ I Always Get in
Trouble with Irm Because I\'m Immediately Want to Use the Stuff, See How
it Works And this Sort of Thing. As Far as Notices, Linda, Do You Know?

Sedbrook: I Just Found this Out Before I Came. The Irm People in Denver
Actually Showed Me the Notice in The \"Federal Register\" That the
Department of Interior Has Gone On Record as Saying They Are Maintaining
a System of Records Called the Smis System and They Have Gone Through
the Proper Notification Process.

Burrell: We Have Another Fax In and this Is from Eric Thompson in Coeur
D\'alene, Idaho. The Question Is This: an Employee, a Forester, Has a
History of Obesity. He Is Injured on the Job in a Field Related Incident
Causing Knee Failure. Over Time the Employee Receives A Clean Bill of
Health from His Orthopedic Surgeon, That\'s the Knee Surgeon, and
General Physician, Cardiac, to Return to Full Field Duty His Peers
Notice Restricted Movement and Significant Cardiac Stress When In the
Field. What Course of Action Does the Supervisor Have?

Sedbrook: Well, These Situations Are Always Difficult. Other Employees
Reporting That The Employee, Even Though the Doctor Has Signed off That
They Can Return to the Job and They\'re out There Hopefully Doing It,
but Employees Reporting, No, They\'re Having Problems with Movement, in
this Case We\'re Talking About, You Have an Obligation to Talk to That
Employee and Ask Them, \"Are You Having Continuing Difficulties?\"
Sometime the Employee Might Say, \"Yes, I Am Having ‑‑\" it Might Be an
Opportunity for Them to Add That. Then it Will Be the Responsibility of
the Employee To Get Additional Medical Follow‑up on That. Also, it May
Be Important That The ‑‑ You May Be in a Situation Where You May Have to
Require Some Sort of Medical Documentation, Because You Don\'t Want to
Put the Bureau at Risk Of Having Somebody out There That Is Not Ready,
Willing and Able to Work.

Nielsen: One Might Have to Take a Look at That Job Description and If
Some Modifications Are Needed and That Sort of Thing, Too? Because We
Don\'t Want to Put Them in a Position to Get Hurt And End up Impacting
Their Lives.

Sedbrook: Absolutely. There Is a Good Example Where Supervisors Have to
Be Aware of What\'s Going on with Employees, And We Have to Be Observant
and This Is One of the Hardest Things in Being a Supervisor, And
Noticing That Maybe an Employee Is Limping or Whatever After They Have
Come Back, and Ask Them Questions. We Need to Do That.

Burrell: Thank You Very Much. We Have Another Fax In. Is an Employee Who
Is Working Outside of the Normal Duty Hours Covered If They\'re Injured?
For Example, a Workaholic Working Late into the Evening on The Budget
Due to the Fact That It\'s Due the next Day, the Employee Is Not Being
Compensated with Overtime or Comp Time.

Slighter: First of All, Anybody Who Is Working on the Budge Net My Way
of Thinking Should Be Covered. Clearly It\'s Going to Be Affect My
Paycheck. I Want to Know about It. From a Department of Labor
Perspective, Remember What We Told You Before, That Even If You Don\'t
Have Official Written Approval, You Don\'t Have Overtime Being Worked,
from OWCP\'s Perspective, We Would Say That You\'re Covered in Those
Circumstances. From the Overtime Provisions of The Fair Labor Standards
Act, That\'s a Different Issue Altogether and I\'m Not a Subject Matter
Expert in That Area and Don\'t Want to Get in That. But You\'re Injured
at 8:00 at Night Working in the Budget, You Fall over in the Chair, a
Light Crashes on Your Head, Clearly Those Things Will Be Covered by
Workers\' Compensation.

Burrell: Thank You. Scott Florence from Lakeview, Oregon, Sent in a
Comment and I Think We Have Addressed this. I Will Read it Anyway. The
BLM Utilizes a Lot of Volunteers in Many Program Areas. It Should Be
Pointed out That The Volunteers Are Also Covered By OWCP Provided There
Is a Volunteer Agreement in Effect. This Is Why it Is Important to Make
Sure That All Volunteers Are Properly Oriented and Trained and Have
Assigned or Approved Volunteer Agreements in Place.

Slighter: There Are Financial Liabilities You Have.

Burrell: Exactly. Thank You, So Much, Scott. This Is in from Abbie Jesse
and It\'s for You, Ralph. Does OWCP Cover on the Job Injuries or
Incidents That Can Be Related to a Diabetic Condition? For Instance, the
Employee Faints from Low Blood Should Goer and Sustains Injuries. Would
That Employee Be Covered? And Then What Responsibilities Would the
Supervisor Have to Prevent this from Occurring?

Slighter: Again, Two‑part Question and I Want to Address Your ‑‑ Direct
Your Attention to One Example I Gave You Before, The Employee Had Who
Had Epilepsy. The Individual in That Case Fell Down to the Floor, Hit
His Forehead, Laceration to His Scalp, Contusion to the Knee. In That
Set of Circumstances, There Is No Condition of Employment Which
Aggravated or Accelerated the Preexisting Condition. That Incident, the
Fall Itself, Would Not Be Covered. Actually If There Are Conditions Of
Employment Which Contribute Tight, There Could Be Coverage. Let\'s Say
That Same Employee, For Example, Is Driving a Government Vehicle and Has
a Diabetic Coma, Drives off the Road and Has a Vehicle Accident. Quite
Clearly If They Were Standing There and Fell Down, as I Said Before,
That\'s Not Something That\'s Covered. You Don\'t Have That Option When
You Are Driving a Vehicle. Under Those Circumstances, We Would Look at
the Mechanics of The Injury and See If There Is Some Condition of
Employment Which Caused the Resulting Disability. Now, for the Second
Half of of That, What Responsibility Does The Supervisor Have? Clearly
in That Type of Situation the Supervisor Responsibility Is to Ensure a
Safe Work Force. In Some Cases You Have an Employee Who Is Prone to this
Type of Injury, Whether it Be Epileptic Seizures or Diabetes, Whatever,
You Want to Make Sure Their Job Doesn\'t Require Them To Be at Greater
Risk Because of This Condition. Someone Who Has Epilepsy Frequently Will
Have Limitations Of Climbing up to Highlights Because of That. That\'s
Going to Be in the Personnel Area, Modification of The Job and So Forth.
But from the Department of Labor Perspective, We Look at Not Necessarily
Disqualifying Them Because They Have this Underlying Condition, but What
Factors of Employment Contribute To That, and If There Were Contributing
Factors of Employment We Could Say There Very Well Could Be Coverage.

Burrell: We Have Several Questions from Nolan, Heath and They\'re All
for You, Rather. First of All, Are Survivor Benefits Paid in Addition to
a Life Insurance Policy?

Slighter: Yes, They Are. Survivor\'s Benefits Are Paid by Workers\'
Compensation and You May Have Optional and Regular Life Insurance. There
Is No Dual Benefit There. There Is Dual Benefit with Workers Annuity
Compensation. You Can\'t Goat Both of Those at The Same Time. But If off
Private Insurance Policy or Government Life Insurance, Optional or
Regular, There\'s No Dual Benefit There.

Burrell: Okay. Good. Question Number Two: How Are Thrift Savings
Deductions and Matching Agency Deductions Treated?

Slighter: Tsp Deductions and For Those People Who Are Covered By Fers,
Federal Employee Retirement System, the Matching Agency Contributions,
We Don\'t Take Any of That out When You\'re In Receipt of the
Compensation. Part of That Is Because of the Way That the Federal Thrift
Retirement Investment Board Has Ruled That You Have to Be by and Large
in a Leave Status and Workers\' Compensation Is a Leave Without Pay.
It\'s Also an Incentive in Many Cases for the Employee to Get Back to
Work, Too, Because They Don\'t Get That Matching Agency Contribution and
They Don\'t Get To Increase Their Tsp Plan If They Are out on Workers\'
Compensation. So We Do Not Deduct for That. For the Csrs People, the
Civil Service Retirement System, We Don\'t Kick into the Csrs Nor Does
the Agency Kick into Their Matching Fund for Them as Well. The Third.

Burrell: the Third Part of The Question. Are Local or Cola, Cost of
Living Allowances, Factored into An Employee\'s Base Pay Before the
Compensation Is Calculated? If Not, this Could Result in a Pay Cut as
Much as One‑fourth of An Employee\'s Pay. By this the Way, this Is
Coming From Alaska.

Slighter: with Locality Pay Coming Up, and Locality Pay Is Not Just for
People Who Live in Alaska, Washington, D.c., Locality Pay Being for a
Metropolitan Area, That\'s Considered Your Base Pay Rate For Workers\'
Compensation Purposes. However, One Thing That Supervisors and
Especially Employees Many Time Don\'t Understand, Once Your Base Pay
Rate on the Date of Injury Is Calculated, Any Increases That You Get
after That Period of Time Would No Longer Be Counted, And Keep in Mind
That If You, For Example, Live in Eastern Washington Where You Don\'t
Get This and Then You\'re Injured and You Move to Alaska, Don\'t Expect
To Get Your Workers\' Compensation Increased by 25%. It\'s Where You Are
Working at The Time of the Injury. Your Base Pay Rate at the Time Of the
Injury. If That Includes 25% Adjustment That Alaska Gets or the Locality
Pay That Are in Effect for about 31 Metropolitan Areas, That\'s Part of
Your Base Pay Rate on The Date of Injury.

Burrell: Thank You Very Much. This Question Is from Margo Here At the
National Training Center And the Question Is: Is Stress Or Psychological
Disorder Considered an Occupational Disease? Ralph?

Slighter: the Answer Is\... Probably. I Can\'t Give You a Firm Answer To
That. There Actually Can Be Cases Where It\'s Considered Traumatic
Injury. One of Our Biggest Sources of Claims Is You as Can You Easily
Guess Is with Air Traffic Controllers and We Have Had Air Traffic
Controllers Who Have Been Responsible for Planes That Have Crashed on
the Screen and Had a Traumatic Reaction on the Spot. That\'s a Notice of
Injury Form, Ca‑1, Traumatic Injury. Usually You Are Filed as an
Occupational Disease Claim and The Reason for That Is Bosses If You File
as a Traumatic Injury Claim, You May Not Bring into The Claim Anything
That Happened On Any Other Day Except for the Day in Which You Had the
Disability, and That\'s Limiting Your Own Claim, Making it More Likely
It\'s Going to Be Denied. So Most of Our Traumatic Injury Claims Are,
Indeed, Occupational In Nature, That Is, More than One Day. Do We Cover
That? Surely We Do. Do We Cover Most of Them? I Would Have to Say the
Answer To That Would Be No, Based on What I Know about What Percentage
of Stress Claims That We Approve and Deny. A Lot of Stress Claims in
Many Cases Are Due to Reasons That Are Not Job Related and We Will Deny
it for That Reason. But We Can, in Fact, Do Cover a Lot of Stress
Claims. Most of Them Are Occupational in Nature.

Burrell: We Have One Final Fax Question, and this Is from Tim, I
Believe, Your Last Name Is Russot. Forgive Me If I Have Not Pronounced
it Correctly. This Is for Linda. The Question Is: Are Restricted Duty
Assignments Limited to Employees with Injuries on the Job or Do They
Include Off‑duty Incidents or Preexisting Conditions?

Sedbrook: the Restricted Duty Assignments That We\'re Talking About Are
for Injured Employees, And the Reason for That, We Talked about Was the
Continuation of Pay Situation Where We Want to Ensure That We ‑‑ First
of All, That the Employee Is Gainfully Employed, And We Try Very Hard to
Keep Routine as Normal as Possible. That\'s Healthy for Employees in The
Recovery Process. Doctors Will Tell You That. Secondly, We Want to Make
Sure That We Get the Most out of the Bureau of Land Management\'s
Diminishing Resources. So an Employee Doing Restricted Duty Is Something
and Is Helpful To Us. So What We\'re Talking about Is Restricted Duty
for a Recovering Employee.

Burrell: Thank You Very Much. Before We Finish up Our Segment Today, I
Have a Confession to Make: I Was Informed Just Before We Went on the Air
Today That One of Our Our Panelists Is Celebrating a Very Special
Birthday. I Would like to Take this Time To Say Happy Birthday to Linda.

Sedbrook: I Didn\'t Know Anybody Knew. I Thought I Would Go to Arizona
And I Would Get out of this Real Easily.

Burrell: Well, You Didn\'t. And You Didn\'t Say Anything to Me at
Breakfast, but I Knew and We Want to Say Happy Birthday, Linda. We Know
It\'s a Very Special Birthday for You and We ‑‑.

Sedbrook: It\'s a Big One. I\'m Vested.

Burrell: We Appreciate You Come to Go Phoenix and Spending This Time
with Us, Anyway. That about Wraps it up for Our Seminar on OWCP and BLM
Managers And Supervisors. As We\'ve Mentioned, Tomorrow May 8th an
Overview of the OWCP Will Be Presented for All BLM Employees. Please
Ensure That All of Your Employees Attend. Today We Discussed Strategies
You Can Use to Prevent Accidents, What Your Responsibilities Are When an
Employee Is Injured on the Job And the Process for Returning Employees
to Work. This Information Will Help You Manage the Injuries Which Occur
In Your Offices and it Will Help To Reduce BLM\'s Cop or Continuation of
Pay and Compensation Costs. In Addition, this Information Is Outlined in
BLM\'s Office of Workers\' Compensation Program Guidebook. It Is Also in
the BLM Safety Manual. If You Have Any Questions, Please Feel Free to
Contact the Safety Officer or OWCP Coordinator in Your Office. They Will
Be Very Happy to Assist You Through this Process. You Are the Key. Stay
Motivated. Ensure Adequate Safety Practices Are in Place. Help Your
Injured Employees Get Back to Work. Remember, It\'s OWCP and You. I
Would like to Remind All BLM Downlink Coordinators to Have All Viewers
to Sign the Attendance Roster and Fax it to The NTC Immediately after
Today\'s Show. Please Keep a Copy in Your Records for Later Use. Please
Complete the Program Evaluation and Give it to the Downlink Coordinators
in Your Office. Coordinators Should Send the Evaluations Back to NTC as
Soon As Possible Following this Broadcast. Both the Roster and
Evaluation Forms Were in the Packets Sent To Your Office Before Today\'s
Show. I Would like to Also Mention Another NTC Distance Learning Event.
On May 21st Through the 23rd, a Three‑day Course Which Will Provide an
Introduction to Interpretation Will Be Broadcast. For Information on
this Telecast As Well as Other Satellite Courses, Call the Training
Center at Area Code 602‑906‑5500 Or Visit the NTC Home Page. To Help
Your Office Participate In Future NTC Broadcasts, See The BLM Satellite
Downlink Guide Or Visit the NTC Home Page on The World Wide Web. NTC\'s
Internet Address is www.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of this Telecast and
Other NTC Broadcasts Are Available on the Home Page. Well, That about
Wraps it up for Our Seminar on OWCP. For BLM Managers and Supervisors. I
Would like to Thank Everyone Who Participated on Today\'s Show. Thank
You Linda Very Much. And Ralph and Yogi. It\'s Been Great Working with
You. I Would Also like to Especially Thank Everyone from the Field Who
Called and Faxed in During Our Interactive Segment. Thanks So Much for
Watching!