The 2022 National Workers’ Compensation and Disability Conference, National Comp, took place October 19-21 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This year’s event was another successful opportunity for the Paradigm team to share some powerful insights and connect with the industry at large. Along with serving as a Platinum Sponsor, Paradigm experts led sessions on topics that included leveraging data for better treatment outcomes and exploring a ground-breaking advancement in prosthetics. Before the conference, Chief Clinical Solutions Officer, Kathy Galia, also participated in the Alliance of  Women in Workers’ Compensation “Elevate Together” event as a panelist.

Visitors to the Paradigm booth also received the latest updates on our leading care management solutions that will set the stage for 2023 and beyond. As we do our part to continue to change lives and guide the industry forward, Paradigm thought leaders shared their unique perspectives on two critical topics in workers’ compensation.

Winning with Data
On Thursday, October 20, Chief Growth Officer Kevin Turner moderated a panel that explored the importance of data analysis in health care and workers’ compensation. Joining Kevin were Kathy Galia; Chief Medical Officer, Michael Choo, MD; and Chris Marfisi, Principal Director, Data & Analytics.

The panel considered how in an increasingly data-driven health care landscape, it is more important than ever for organizations to develop and maintain effective data and analytics strategies. Particularly in workers’ compensation, there is tremendous untapped potential to use data to streamline processes, mitigate risk, reduce costs, and improve the quality of treatment. But to do this successfully, leaders need to know how to effectively instill and develop data literacy and governance in their organizations.

During the session, the panel emphasized the benefits of leveraging best practices for data analytics from group health care and identifying outliers to build successful strategic initiatives in workers’ compensation. With a greater emphasis on data and health intelligence, the speakers stressed the importance of using objective evidence to more accurately predict life expectancy and medical costs, as well as improving provider scoring and quality ratings. Ultimately, the experts pointed to the ability of platforms that can access a broad data set across workers’ compensation and commercial health care to vastly improve outcomes for injured workers and their families.

The Future of Osseointegration and How It’s Changing the Lives of Amputees
Later on Thursday, Jan Saunders, Clinical Director, Prosthetics, presented on the topic of osseointegration, and how it has the potential to reduce costs and change lives for amputees. Dr. Choo joined Jan for the Q&A session of the presentation.

Osseointegration is a novel surgical procedure for prosthetic attachments recently that involves attaching a titanium implant directly to the bone. This new approach is a great solution for injured workers with problematic issues associated with conventional socket-fitted prosthetics—including friction, blistering, tissue degradation, debilitating skin wounds, and pain.

Dr. Choo emphasized the significant biomechanical benefits with osseointegration where improved lumbopelvic movement patterns and osseoperception enable greater range of motion and more natural movement, resulting in longer wear time of prosthetics, faster walking speeds, and reduction in overuse injuries such as low back pain and osteoarthritis. Jan also shared the anticipated medical cost savings from the elimination of on-going socket replacements.  During his talk, Jan— a seasoned prosthetics expert—reviewed how this procedure works and provided examples of dramatic reduction in total cost of prosthetics claims for injured workers with amputations treated with osseointegration.

Working together to drive change and progress
Paradigm is proud to set the standard for life-changing outcomes and human-focused care in the most challenging work-related cases. Learn more about our wide-ranging solutions, including: 

• Catastrophic and Risk Solutions 
• Case Management Solutions
• Specialty Networks 
• Care at Home

We’d like to once again thank everyone who stopped by our booth and attended sessions at this year’s National Comp. Watch for updates as Paradigm continues to plan in-person events for the remainder of 2022 and beyond.