BWC medical director wants injured workers to have choice

Many feel the 2005 investment scandal has distracted the agency.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Injured workers would have a wider choice of doctors and greater access to new medical technology. Businesses would face less government red tape.

To people who have experienced a job injury claim handled by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, this may seem like a dream world. But it’s the vision of Robert Balchick, who took over this month as the bureau’s medical director.

Balchick, 52, a urologist and former bioscience consultant, is in charge of the medical side of an office that handled 171,692 on-the-job injury claims last year from work sites across the state. Every business in Ohio is required to carry workers’ comp insurance to cover employee injury and job-related illness.

The agency has been overhauled with new management and an oversight board since an investment scandal broke in 2005 that saw a big Republican fundraiser invest Ohio employers’ premiums in rare coins and other collectibles.

But patients, doctors and employers have complained that the scandal distracted the agency from promised progress on the medical care side, where they argue unpredictability, red tape and delays remain persistent.

Balchick said the bureau has set up too many roadblocks to patient care and doctor convenience over the years. He wants to open up the bureau’s network of physicians and occupational therapists and expand the types of medicines and treatments that the state will pay for.

“Every day some new technology comes on board, and you need to be proactive in assessing them, be proactive in making them available for the people of the state of Ohio,” Balchick said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The bureau’s board of directors unanimously approved a fee plan Friday that increases payments to most of the 27,000 medical professionals statewide who treat injured workers, the first increase since 2004.

The bureau also must streamline bill payments and beef up standards for the private companies that manage workers’ comp claims, Balchick said.

His other ideas include exploring a partnership with public health experts at Ohio State University. An affiliation between the nation’s largest publicly funded workers’ comp system and the country’s largest university has the potential to make the bureau’s medical operation a model for the country, he said.

“The message there is we’re not just looking internally with trying to solve some of these problems,” Balchick said.

Hired after an extensive search, Balchick’s philosophy — one shared by the administration of Gov. Ted Strickland — brings together government health care, higher education and the state’s biotechnology sector.

Balchick spent the past two years working with bioscience firms that had received grants through the state’s Third Frontier technology program. He earned a master’s degree in business last year from Ohio State.

His outreach to Ohio State comes at a time when the university has elevated its public health section from a school to a college.

Allard Dembe, chair of the college’s division of health services management and policy, said his public health team is already working with the state departments of Health, Rehabilitation and Correction, and Job and Family Services.

Dembe, who taught previously at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, has an expertise in workers’ compensation systems. He approached BWC Administrator Marsha Ryan last year about a possible partnership, but lingering challenges from the investment scandal made it the wrong time.

He sees Balchick’s arrival as an important step toward getting a partnership off the ground.