An Evaluation of the New York State Workers’ Compensation Pilot Program for Alternative Dispute Resolution

In 1995, the State 0f New York enacted legislation authorizing the establishment of a workers\u27 compensation alternative dispute resolution pilot program for the unionized sector of the construction industry. Collective bargaining agreements could establish an alternative dispute resolution process for resolving claims (including but not limited to mediation and arbitration), use of an agreed managed care organization or list of authorized providers for medical treatment that constitutes the exclusive source of all medical and related treatment, supplemental benefits, return-to-work programs, and vocational rehabilitation programs. The legislation also directed the School ofIndustrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University (ILR) to evaluate compliance with state and federal due process requirements provided in the collective bargaining agreements authorized by this act, and the use, costs and merits of the alternative dispute resolution system established pursuant to this act. In response to this legislative mandate, ILR reviewed the research previously conducted on alternative dispute resolution (ADR), generally, and in workers\u27 compensation. This included examining the purported advantages and disadvantages of ADR, the prevalence of ADR, and published statistical or anecdotal evidence regarding the impact of ADR. ILR created a research design for claimant-level and project-level analyses, and developed data collection instruments for these analyses that included an injured worker survey for ADR claimants and claimants in the traditional (statutory)workers\u27 compensation system, an Ombudsman\u27s log, a manual of data elements pertaining to ADR and comparison group claimants, and interview questions for ADR signatories and other officials. The findings in this report draw upon a comparison of claimant-level, descriptive statistics (averages) for injured workers in the ADR and traditional (statutory) workers\u27 compensation system; the results of more sophisticated, statistical analyses of claimant-level data; and project-level information (including, but not limited to, interviews with ADR signatories and dispute resolution officials)

Workers\u27 Compensation: Benefits, Costs, and Safety Under Alternative Insurance Arrangements

Thomason, Schmidle, and Burton make use of a unique data set to delve into how insurance arrangements affect several objectives of the workers\u27 compensation (WC) program. They underscore the effects of deregulation and other changes in WC insurance pricing arrangements by performing empirical analyses that use state-specific cost, benefit, and injury data from 48 states for 1975-1995. This allows them to address the interactive relationships among the four objectives of WC systems adequacy of benefits, affordability of WC insurance, efficiency in the benefits delivery system, and prevention of workplace injuries and diseases and how various public policies adopted by states or the federal government work to achieve them.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1058/thumbnail.jp

Non-equilibrium condensation and coarsening of field-driven dipolar colloids

In colloidal suspensions, self-organization processes can be easily fueled by external fields. One particularly interesting class of phenomena occurs in monolayers of dipolar particles that are driven by rotating external fields. Here we report results from a computer simulation study of such systems focusing on the clustering behavior also observed in recent experiments. The key result of this paper is a novel interpretation of this pattern formation phenomenon: We show the clustering to be a by-product of a vapor-liquid first order phase transition. In fact, the observed dynamic coarsening process corresponds to the spindodal demixing that occurs during such a transitionComment: 6 pages, 5 figure

A model for rhythmic and temperature-independent growth in ‘clock’ mutants of neurospora

The Q 10 for the frequency (number of bands per 24 hours) of the ‘clock’ mutant (strain CL11A) of Neurospora crassa over the range 20–30° C is close to 1.0. By contrast, that for the double mutant, ‘wrist watch’ (strain CL12a), is closer to 2 over this temperature range. Strain CL12a differs from ‘clock’ in other ways as well, including 1) decreased rate of linear extension and band size, 2) greater sensitivity of growth rate to high temperatures and, 3) masking of rhythmic growth below 15° C. The response to temperature of several colonial mutants and standard (‘wild-type’) strains was studied and it is shown that some strains are temperature-independent yet arhythmic. A temperature-compensation model is presented to explain the response of ‘clock’ mutants to temperature and it is concluded that they demonstrate a non-circadian free-running endogenous rhythm.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43284/1/11046_2005_Article_BF02049924.pd

Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

Contains fulltext : 172380.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access