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South Carolina Workers� Comp News

January 11th, 2007 Posted by Mark

South Carolina employers now have a trusted mediator to count on when workers’ comp claims go sour—and it is all for free. The South Carolina Workers’ Comp Commission has been faced with a huge deluge of workers’ comp claim rejection appeals brought before their Full Commission, and to so to try to cut through the pile a bit, the Commission has decided to hire a professional workers’ comp claim mediator. Her name is Ginger Crocker.

Crocker’s job will be to help deliberate when an employer and a worker disagree over a workers’ comp claim. So, say, for instance that one of your workers claims carpal tunnel syndrome was caused because they were typing day in and day out at your office. If you didn’t agree, and refused to pay the claim, the issue would normally have gone from one commissioner to the South Carolina Workers’ Comp Commission to the Full Commission. It’s on the way to the Full Commission that this backlog has built up.

Crocker will now be there for you and your employees before the case reaches the Full Commission. Her job in that spot will be to hopefully convince the employer and the employee to negotiate and settle, saving everyone involved the save and money that would be spent if the case had to go all the way to the Full Commission. Her job—mind you—is not to make a decision on the case, but rather to try to help the conflicting parties come together in some sort of agreement and end their feud.

This position is going to at least last for six months, with all expenses associated with Crocker’s work to be picked up by the Workers’ Comp Commission in South Carolina. Without Crocker, the whole process could have taken you at least four months to get an appeal to the Full Commission, despite the fact that the commission are literally working overtime to deal with the flood of cases they face.