By Bonnie Prater
WSIA Training Coordinator

March 2009

Hello Members!

Well, the days are getting longer but winter seems to be putting up a fight.  While traveling in central Washington, yesterday, I experienced sunshine, heavy rain, thunder and lightening, and a sudden and heavy snow storm – all in a few hours!  Hopefully, we will see some lovely spring days soon!

Let me tell you what is happening in the training world…We just presented the last two Calculations Webinars in February, LEP and PPD.  I hope you had the opportunity to join us for the live events, but if not, these webinars were recorded and are available for purchase on our website.  When you register for an archived webinar, you receive the same reading materials and homework problems the live class attendees receive, along with access to the same links within the webinar itself.  The benefits to the archived webinars are that you can view/listen to them at your convenience and start, stop, rewind, and fast forward the presentation, according to your needs.  We have received a lot of great feedback from the live class attendees on these webinars, especially the PPD one, so I encourage you to consider utilizing this training opportunity.  For your convenience, all four of the recent Calculations Webinar archives are posted on our training page for purchase.  Certified Administrator continuing education credits are the same whether you take the live webinar or the archived version. Go to our website to purchase these on-line training programs http://www.wsiassn.org/public/training_programs.html

We are headed down the final stretch in the WWCP Medical Information course, one of IIU’s Washington Workers’ Compensation Professional designation courses.  The next course, WWCP Claims Management, starts on April 7th.  Registration is now open on our website so sign up now! Our Claims Management facilitators are still getting the speakers lined up for this course so if you are skilled in claims management and are interested in presenting at one of these classes please email either Bob Duncan or Nicole Tedrow at the following email addresses:  rduncan@psesd.org or  Nicolet@reinischmackenzielaw.com.  

I will be sending out a survey in the near future to help me determine the best locations for our 2009-10 WWCP courses.  Please watch for this and respond.  I am also looking for volunteers to facilitate these courses.  The courses begin in September and run through June.  If you have any interest in becoming a WWCP facilitator, please email me at bonnie.prater@wsiassn.org.  Thanks! 

The response to our January 30th Pay During Appeal Webinar was overwhelming.  We had over 160 participants join us for the free webinar on this hot topic!  We received great feedback from attendees.  I am so glad that we were able to provide this training opportunity for our members.  We will be presenting three more webinars in the next few months: one on spinal cord injuries, one on Medicare Reporting and one on a topic still being determined.  Watch for emails from me with more details in the near future.

Our Certification Review class is being held March 16th and 17th – just before the Department’s Certification Test on the 18th.  We hope, once again, to improve our test results!  Stay tuned for the results in my next column.  This class is offered prior to each of the quarterly Certification Tests.  Just a reminder – the pass rate for our class as compared to all testers is typically significantly higher.  I urge you to take “The Class” before taking “The Test”!

Lastly, I am working with the IIU Board of Regents to revamp our Claims Training Series, currently known as Claims 1 – 4.  We are making many changes in format, content, presentation, topics, etc., and hope to have the new and improved claims training series completed this summer.  Stay tuned for more details on this in future columns. 

Until April…

Bonnie Prater

WSIA Training Coordinator

bonnie.prater@wsiassn.org

Posted 4 March 2009

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