The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect health care worker shortages, which is having an effect on treatment options in workers compensation, experts say.

For example, nursing turnover rose in the pandemic and is beginning to normalize to pre-pandemic levels, but it’s “still too high,” said Charles Kyles, director of workers’ compensation for Duke University & Health System in Durham, North Carolina.

Mr. Kyles was a panelist in a session of the Workers Compensation Research Institute’s annual Issues & Research conference last week in Boston. Issues addressed in the session on the employer outlook for 2024 ran the gamut from worker shortages to violence.

Workers comp claimants have been affected by provider shortages during the past few years, as fewer health practitioners meant limited care, Mr. Kyles said, adding the issue is still prevalent.

Some providers who previously agreed to treat workers comp patients are now declining to take on many claimants, leaving employers with injured workers in a difficult spot, he said.

The issue hit home for Duke, as university-affiliated physicians didn’t want to take workers comp cases — even those involving their own injured coworkers, Mr. Kyles said.

Experts say states’ medical fee schedules can also be a deterrent for some practitioners who feel it’s not lucrative enough to accept workers comp patients.

Some providers don’t understand the “complexities of seeing patients in the workers compensation system,” said Sharon DelGuercio, senior manager of workers compensation for Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

“It’s something as an industry that we need to focus on,” said Ms. DelGuercio, who also spoke during the employer outlook session.

An upside post-pandemic, the panelists said, has been improved return-to-work options for injured employees.

“We collaborate very strongly with the store managers, and the nurses are part of that,” said Michele Maffei, Tampa, Florida-based director of workers compensation for Publix Supermarkets Inc., a southern U.S. grocery store chain.

Publix, she said, has even been successful with bringing amputees back to work.

Another issue the employer community has grappled with, especially post-pandemic, is the increase in workplace violence, something that has been a trending topic in workers compensation.

Mr. Kyles called it a “rising concern,” saying such incidents seemed to increase as more people returned to the workforce in the past year or so.

Workplace violence ranges from verbal abuse and minor fights to more serious physical assaults, Mr. Kyles said. Duke has a workplace violence task force that is gathering data “to attack all the different angles of this problem” so it becomes more manageable for risk professionals, he said.  

Publix has had its share of workplace violence problems, Ms. Maffei said.

“No grocery store, retail chain, can not be affected by it,” she said. “I think in general the world is seeing more violence.”