Dysfunction in Illinois

Illinois’ troubled system for compensating injured state workers hands out money too readily, sometimes without medical evidence to back up a claim and occasionally paying benefits the hurt employee didn’t even seek, according to an audit released on April 25.

Auditor General William Holland suggested lawmakers follow up last year’s overhaul of the workers’ compensation system with further improvements in a report that found information about the process “incomplete, inaccurate, and inconsistent.”

Holland’s report found overworked claims adjustors carrying caseloads several times larger than is practical and negotiating settlements with workers’ lawyers, a job the AG should do. They sometimes approved temporary disability payments in an ongoing case even though the worker hadn’t asked for it.

Arbitrators deciding contested cases had no guidelines for deciding compensation and issued wildly inconsistent awards, the report said. Some had conflicts of interest in the cases they presided over.

The Workers’ Compensation Commis-sion agreed that its conflict of interest standards should be strengthened after the audit found former arbitrators had professional relationships with lawyers or doctors involved in cases they were deciding, and six instances where arbitrators kept on hearing cases when they had their own workers’ comp claims pending.