Two Consultants Win N.D Workers’ Comp Review Work

North Dakota’s workers’ compensation agency has agreed to spend more than $300,000 on two consultants to examine the troubled agency’s management and its handling of worker benefit claims.

The Workforce Safety and Insurance (WSI) agency’s board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to hire Henry Neal Conolly, a former executive director of New York’s workers compensation fund, to review WSI’s management and personnel practices.

The board hired Marsh USA Inc. to check the North Dakota agency’s handling of benefit claims. The company’s Chicago office submitted the bid. Conolly expects to finish his review by Feb. 15, while Marsh set a Feb. 29 completion date.

John Halvorson, WSI’s interim chief executive officer, said Marsh will select several hundred claims from January 2005 onward and evaluate whether the agency’s benefits decision was made correctly.

Conolly’s contract is for $148,750, while the Marsh contract is valued at $167,675, for a total of $316,425. Marsh is part of Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. of New York.

Halvorson said Workforce Safety could fit the expense into its budget and said he thought the contracts were reasonable.

“In looking at the quality of firms we did get … for this business, work comp consult work, it’s not out of line,” Halvorson said.

Workforce Safety provides insurance coverage for employees who are injured on the job. It pays for medical bills, lost wages, rehabilitation and other benefits.

Gov. John Hoeven sought the outside review because of recent upheavals at WSI, including the firing of its chief executive officer and questions raised by the agency’s internal auditor about whether some benefit claims were being improperly denied.

Hoeven had wanted the consultants’ review finished by Feb. 1, but Ryan Bernstein, the governor’s staff attorney, said Hoeven was pleased by how the consultant hiring process had progressed.

“We’re anxious to see this move forward, and get WSI back on track,” Bernstein said. “We wanted this done in February, and this sounds like it will work.”