WorkCompCollege.com Study Hall 

February 2025 
Curriculum: Workers’ Recovery Professional (WRP)
Course: Preventing Work Comp Fraud ... It Takes a Village 
School: Legal 
Faculty: Curt DeVries; President, Fraudsniffr 

Curt is a 35-year claims professional with extensive claim handling and management experience in both the carrier and TPA markets. He has work comp experience in over 30 jurisdictions in the U.S and throughout Canada as well as complex casualty experience nationwide. He is well acquainted with the challenges facing insurers and employers in an increasingly liberal litigation climate as well as ongoing challenges involved with TPA management and reserves appropriation. These insurance marketplace challenges are what inspired him to found Fraudsniffr. In his current position he is the president and head of business development. 

(1) Why did you choose this subject matter to teach? 

There is such a focus on loss expense within the industry, it is easy to lose sight of the fact there are intangible benefits to assigning ancillary services together that will be lost if you assign these benefits one at a time. 

(2) Why is this subject matter important to Work Comp stakeholders? 

While we all want to provide the best care to an injured worker, we must also remember the costs of this care negatively affect the employer and their ability to bid for future business as well as the profitability of the carrier writing the work comp coverage. By assigning services together, we create an earlier RTW while at the same time developing indicators of possible malingering and eliminating unnecessary exposures. 

(3) How does your content help further a workers’ recovery mindset? 

Accountability is key to any positive outcome. If an injured worker is keenly aware that every effort is being made to make sure his or her treatment is focused and that recovery expectations are clear, the temptation to prolong recovery because “no one is paying attention anyway” is eliminated. 

(4) What are five takeaways / action items for students? 

+ Understand the difference between fraud and malingering. 

+ With increased technology there are more cost-effective ways to do surveillance than traditional surveillance methods. 

+ Surveillance dovetails nicely with nurse case management (NCM) and vocational rehabilitation to focus treatment and increase vocational rehab opportunities. 

+ Information flowing from multiple information sources gives a more complete picture of what the claimant needs are and how to address them. 

+ In cases of disputed issues, magistrates often rule of favor of the party that can tell the most complete story. To tell a complete story, the most effective time to do so is early in the claim. Money spent to tell a better story early in a claim saves money at the end of the claim. 

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