October 2017 – Measuring Motivation

Attitude Is Everything

An individual’s motivation is so important when we are discussing ‘return to work’, yet in the claims management process we do not assess, measure, or quantify this factor! Typically, when we look at the claims data used to build predictive models, it’s really rather thin.

The systems we use in claims management were designed to make payments or track contract terms. The first question I ask when speaking to an analytics group in an insurance company is “what type of data do you collect?”. There is not enough value in these systems for analytics with just Age, Diagnosis, Occupation, Level of Duty, and Benefit Amount. These data do not enable us to drive a deep assessment of the ‘stuff’ that really influences return to work.

To move the game forward, we need to collect information relating to motivation, level of pain, lifestyle, capacity, and other factors. We need to collect this data in a consistent and quantifiable manner.

This information needs to be captured in a way that does not involve a battalion of clerical support staff, but uses analytics to focus our skilled claim managers where the greatest difference can be achieved.

The Dying Art of Talking to Claimants

An experienced claim manager in conversation with an individual, would quickly be able to assess the claimant’s motivation to return to work, but this is a dying art!

Today, claim managers do not have time to call claimants, and the questioning skills are rusty through lack of use… New claim managers are not learning this skill.

So we need an alternative!

The Claim Lab provides tools that can be used to capture this crucial  information without increasing the claim manager’s workload. An online questionnaire is combined with multi-variable regression models to assess the association between the score recorded from the questionnaire, and the eventual outcome of the claim. The questionnaire is completed via a secure self-serve web page.

We have questionnaires available to measure motivation as well as questionnaires designed for specific diagnoses, levels of pain etc.

If you would like to learn more detail about this interesting topic, please email us at info@claimlab.org .