Reli

In an industrial setting, bustling shop floors full of machinery and personnel ideally function in a synchronistic manner. However, the moment an accident occurs and a worker gets injured, it all comes to a standstill.

After the emergency has passed, the focus eventually shifts to determining the accident’s causes, minimizing the cost of medical services, and avoiding expensive claims settlements. When the key stakeholders—employers, payors, risk managers, and care providers—get entangled in legal, financial, and regulatory issues, the injured worker’s care takes a backseat.

Turning the spotlight back onto the injured personnel in workers’ compensation claims is Reli. With a patient first approach, the company oversees the recovery of the injured employee by focusing on quality treatment, better compliance, and faster resolution of workplace injuries, all while considering the best interests of all stakeholders.

“We’re the first and only Patient Recovery Process Partner that works with all of the stakeholders to determine how we can best resolve workers’ injuries and put them on the road to recovery,” says Chris Yanakos, President of Reli.

By expediting the recovery process, Reli enables a faster and safer return to work. In turn, employers are relieved of workforce shortages in an already stressed labor market and the burden of medical costs and claims handling is reduced. By delivering a holistic, patient centric healthcare experience, Reli plays a significant role in reducing high employee attrition rates in the wake of the Great Resignation. In line with studies that have shown a direct correlation between overall employee population health and better post injury care, Reli’s deft orchestration of workers’ post-injury recovery process leads to a collective improvement in workforce health.

Blending Technology and Human Touch

Reli stands apart in the workers’ compensation space by combining technology and a work-related injury care provider network of qualified physicians, enabling workers to receive care without delay. Mindful of the effectiveness of necessary medical interventions at the right point in the healing process, Reli leverages a strong IT foundation to ensure care is delivered to patients by the right provider at the right time. The blend of technology and human touch acts as a safety net, positively impacting the healing process and optimizing injured workers’ care. This approach also lowers overall cost, lost work time, administrative headaches, and legal exposure.

Enabling Reli to deliver enhanced workers’ compensation care coordination is its state-of-the art, turnkey, and easy-to-use workplace injury care management platform. Equipped with cutting edge, predictive analytics, the platform adeptly determines the ideal treatment pathway for injured personnel—starting with the first healthcare visit.

Reli’s sophisticated platform is completely payor-agnostic, easily interfacing with any workers’ compensation insurance carrier or payor. In combination with the vast network of care providers, the platform allows Reli to drive efficiency and sensitivity in workplace injury resolution.

“We bring a compassionate, advocacy based approach to patient treatment, covering the entire medical management in workers’ compensation,” states Yanakos.

Patient Recovery Process Partner in Action

Reli follows a step-by-step method to provide “care cohesion” that streamlines workers’ compensation programs, which are often fragmented due to the involvement of multiple stakeholders and vendors. The first step connects the injured worker to the right care provider in its Reli Edge Network. Once companies upload information about the injury and related insurance details, the platform channels the information to the pre-qualified care providers. This enables them to gain a complete view of the incoming patient, helping fast-track treatment.

We Bring a Compassionate, Advocacy-Based Approach to Patient Treatment, Covering the Entire Medical Management in Workers’ Compensation

The platform enhances existing workers’ compensation programs by ensuring swift access to information about the best, most relevant, nearby care providers. Within 24 to 48 hours of the accident, it provides employers with a comprehensive, easy-to-understand picture of the pending claim, something that would take employers weeks to develop without Reli.

In the next step, the platform leverages predictive analytics to determine what treatments the injured personnel will likely need, helping direct the workers to the right medical provider at the right time. The platform also brings clarity to patients and stakeholders during the treatment process by showing the status of treatment and outcome predictions on the recovery path.

Following this, Reli troubleshoots micro delays in the treatment that tend to snowball into macro costs in terms of care, loss of productivity, and claims settlement expenses. This involves Reli scheduling patient visits, handling all paperwork, and tracking patients through its system—from injury to recovery and return to work—in a highly transparent manner.

Reli educates clients on the importance of following these steps to address gaps in their workers’ compensation programs and fulfill workplace injury management needs. In an extension of this offering, Reli designs informative materials presented in a bite-sized fashion, in collaboration with clients, to help them educate their employees on Reli’s services and processes. Employees can also access Reli’s services with just one phone call, instead of contacting different physicians to ascertain the best fit in the event of an injury.

To assess the effectiveness of the injured workers’ treatment and recovery path, Reli employs “stakeholder listening.” This involves periodic surveys and engagements with clients to enhance workers’ injury care and claims management. Continuous patient recovery reporting is done to ensure clients are on the right track with their workplace injury management. This also provides scope for course correction in case of delays in treatment and claim settlement.

Reli effectively handles the elaborate method of providing comprehensive care services through pre- and post-injury management phases. In the pre-injury phase, in partnership with clients, Reli identifies the sites where care services are required. It then sets up corresponding provider networks by anticipating the types of injuries most likely to occur in those locations.

For example, for a window manufacturer, where broken glass and eye injuries are more probable, Reli ensures access to ophthalmologists in the local provider network.

Reli also informs providers about new clients in their area, who may seek their services for workplace injuries. By keeping all the key stakeholders in the loop as soon as a workplace accident occurs, Reli significantly enhances the handling of the post-injury phase, expediting the injured worker’s recovery.

In claims settlements, Reli provides immense time and cost efficiencies. For instance, Reli helped a large multi-state grocery partner save 41 percent in medical expenses and 63 percent in total indemnity in just two years, while reducing lost work time for recovering workers. Likewise, for an insurer with around $2 billion in workers’ compensation premiums, Reli enabled significant cost savings of 37 percent on claims settlement in just one year.

Reli is gearing up to write greater successes by ramping up its platform in anticipation of value-based care trends in workers’ compensation. Reli has already developed a model to accommodate provisions for evaluating care providers and enabling performance-oriented reimbursement for their services.

Along with plans to revamp the platform, Reli is well-prepared to handle increasing cases of occupational injury in the coming months and years, as the ongoing labor shortage leads companies to hire untrained workers who are more vulnerable to workplace accidents. All of this ties in with Reli’s focus on empowering workforces with high-quality medical care for faster injury recovery, and to ensure better financial outcomes for all the stakeholders.

The Road to Holistic Occupational Injury Care

Reli’s journey to provide holistic, patient-centric occupational injury management services began in the mid-1980s with the establishment of clinics in three states to serve a series of urgent care facilities specifically for work-related claims. Reli expanded its existing care provider network by contracting with pre-qualified providers offering similar workplace injury care services across the U.S., independent of its clinic locations. This enabled a wider clientele reach that included mid-size insurance companies, captive insurance groups, and large self-insured employers. Today, Reli has a presence in more than 40 states.

Reli dedicates itself to being employee-centric, fostering in its workforce a desire to serve clients and their workers with integrity, honesty, and transparency. Reli’s brilliant teams of medical managers and IT experts provide the best outcomes to injured workers with their impactful insights on enhancing care management and claim settlements.

As the go-to provider of fast occupational injury claim resolution, with a strong focus on quality care, Reli will continue to put the injured worker’s speedy recovery at the center of workers’ compensation.