2019-04-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board April 24, 2019 She’s taken the hardest cases and she’s worked those files, and she’s engaged herself in negotiations—and taking the hard files and reassigning them to herself. But, yet, she affords a lot of, I guess, positive information and responses and just a clear direction going forward. And I think the staff appreciates that. So, for now, I’m going to keep monitoring it. We’re still in the honeymoon stage. I meet regularly with Sommer and we’re just, kind of, addressing that. What I like is she’s already starting to ensure that cases get closed. As you know, we currently have 400—well, not as you know, but what’s been reported—we have 468 open cases, which seems to be—it’s a high amount of open cases for an employer who only has 2,800 employees. So, she’s addressing that—that’s one of our priorities. We sat down. We listed our priorities and she’s addressing it, and I appreciate her expertise and knowledge. She hit the ground running. And the other—the second part that she brought to the table is that her experience with the County for the past few years has been in the financial—she was an account clerk—and so, she has that County financial background. So, she can pull up numbers—pull up information. She’s familiar with our FRESH accounting system within the County. And she has such a tremendous amount of resourcefulness and understanding of the finances. So, it just makes, it just puts the (inaudible) everything—it just makes everything else so much easier going forward. So— CHR. NAMAHOE: Bill, quick question— MR. BRILHANTE: Sure. CHR. NAMAHOE: —not to interrupt you. What’s the roster of doctors that are willing to take work comp like—on this island? MR. BRILHANTE: We have our—that’s our—that’s one of our largest problematic areas is because we don’t have enough care providers. So, oftentimes, if we can’t find a care provider here on the Big Island, we have to send them to Oahʻu. And under the statute, we have to cover all that expense. So, every time we send, for example, a work comp claimant to Oahʻu for a psych. treatment because we can’t find any psychiatrist or psychologist here, locally, we cover the airfare, the— we do the taxi ride— CHR. NAMAHOE: Yeah. MR. BRILHANTE: Fortunately, we kind of keep in mind that we try not have them stay overnight because, if they did, then we would cover the hotel. And sometimes we just can’t help it, but if a claimant has an appointment and the only thing that’s available is first thing in the morning—sometimes we just have to send them the day before just to ensure that they make that first (inaudible). Page 8