Research

Scope and Content Note

The Commission compiled these case files to track individual investigations of doctors, x-ray laboratories, surgical supply firms, hospitals, insurance companies, and others involved in, or transacting business with parties involved in, workers' compensation cases.

The case files usually contain records subpoenaed by the Commission, such as: compensation medical report forms; patient medical histories, sometimes including notes on each visit; bank statements; cancelled checks or check stubs; bank deposit slips; schedules of cash receipts and disbursements; and ledgers.

Additional records found in the case files may include: summary schedules of insurance companies' compensation cases providing names of doctors and amounts of kickbacks received; statistical and financial schedules and summaries of patient visits, money received, and payments or kickbacks made or received; lists of kickbacks paid providing to whom paid and amount; narrative reports summarizing information from subpoenaed records and from testimony of individuals; summaries of income taxes filed; State Troopers' investigation reports on questionable claims or compensation practices relating to the case being investigated; lists of "suspected" checks to be investigated, including payee, amount, date, and reason for issuance of check; and receipts for records subpoenaed by the Commission.

The series also contains a small amount of material providing analysis and summary reports on individual topics of investigation, including: lump sum settlements; State Insurance Fund reserves; ranking of insurance carriers on promptness of disposition of compensable cases; delays in resolution of cases appealed to the Appellate Division; charges that death cases involving large monetary claims were being disallowed and that widows were being defrauded because insurance carriers were paying doctors to find no causal relation between accidents and death; frequency of payment of awards to claimants employed by uninsured employers; and kickbacks to surgical supply and x-ray firms.