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The rapid increase in claims severity is driving the cost of medical care and home-based services higher than ever before--medical claims costs have risen 6.6% annually over a six-year period. While companies focus on itemized pricing, they also need to address the opportunity to drive deeper cost savings through a holistic care management approach across the claims lifecycle.

Innovation is a much discussed concept in the insurance industry, yet few carriers actually deliver it. But one thing is for sure, in today's complex world of new and often unexpected risks, there is plenty of need for innovative products.

"Getting ahead of the claim" can mean a lot of things to different parties within workers compensation, but to the folks at myMatrixx, the full-service pharmacy and ancillary medical benefits management company in Tampa, Fla., it means success for both patients and payers. Success that is measured in improved outcomes, improved quality of life, decreased complications due to polypharmacy, and subsequent decreased costs.

Changes affecting workers' comp pharmacy benefits are challenging, but innovation and strategies create great opportunities.

Professionals in the workers' compensation world see it happen time and again. Claims best practices have proven early intervention greatly increases the probability for a win-win result. Patients are provided a more appropriate treatment path and payers get the most efficient outcome.

The most effective pharmacy benefit managers are proactive when it comes to getting injured workers off unnecessary opioids, lowering claims costs in the process.

The "off-label" use of prescription drugs is nothing new. In fact, it's become a fairly common practice, as medications introduced to market for one reason often can prove beneficial to helping patients with various conditions outside the medication's original intent. A 2006 analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, for example, reported that up to one-fifth of all drugs are prescribed off label.

Insurance carriers of all types today are hard-pressed to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. So what else is new?

All it takes is a glance at the predictions and projections, and it's quite easy to see that mobile computing--driven primarily by continued smartphone growth and the emergence of smaller, more versatile tablets--is taking off in a major way.

Looking back at the history of Safety National, which began writing excess workers compensation insurance coverage back when Allied troops were battling the original Axis Powers in World War II, an interesting pattern emerges.

With the aftermath of the devastating Japanese earthquake still to be tabulated, that massive natural disaster has refocused the world's attention on environmental issues.

Those familiar with the world of workers' compensation insurance know that complexity, mainly in the form of the historical patchwork quilt of state laws regulating the industry, is the rule, not the exception.

When it comes to workers' compensation healthcare, medical foods have arrived.

For risk and captive managers, there's no substitute for doing the due diligence to reduce the odds of substantial problems arising from a captive's would-be business partner.

When insurance is just a job, continuing education requirements are all about keeping your license. When insurance becomes a career, everything is about relationships, keeping your clients, and serving them well.