Alabama Workers' Comp Blawg

From Workers’ Compensation to Workers’ Recovery: Why Change Can and Should Start in Alabama

Thirteen years ago, my friend Bob Wilson asked a deceptively simple question: What if we stopped calling this system “workers’ compensation” and started calling it “Workers’ Recovery”?

At the time, some dismissed the idea as a cosmetic rebrand without substance. But Bob has never been interested in empty labels. His argument then, and now, is far more meaningful: language shapes behavior, and behavior shapes outcomes.

Workers’ compensation is inherently transactional. It focuses on payments, benefits, settlements, and financial exposure. Workers’ recovery, by contrast, centers on people, healing, restoration of function, dignity, and a return to productive life. One focuses on checks. The other focuses on outcomes. The distinction matters and the movement is real!

As Bob recently explained in his blog article, “It’s Time to Finish What We Started: The Case for Workers’ Recovery”

(available at: https://www.bobscluttereddesk....), what once seemed like fringe thinking has steadily moved into the mainstream. The biopsychosocial model is no longer controversial. Claim advocacy is now part of the professional lexicon. Social Determinants of Health are openly discussed in claims handling and medical management. Across the country, carriers, employers, and institutions have demonstrated that recovery-focused systems produce better outcomes; medically, emotionally, and economically.

Through the Workers’ Recovery Professional (WRP) certification at the WorkCompCollege, Bob has helped train hundreds of professionals to treat injured workers as partners in recovery, not adversaries in a transaction. Washington State’s, “Vocational Recovery Project” and the University of Texas white paper he cites provide something our industry demands: proof that the concept works.

As long as our statutes, agencies, regulations, and forms still say, “workers’ compensation,” this remains a movement, not a transformation. Legislative language sets expectations. It defines the framework in which every stakeholder operates whether it be workers, employers, adjusters, lawyers, judges, physicians, and regulators. If the law frames the system as compensation-driven, participants will behave accordingly, regardless of good intentions.

Real change requires official adoption, and that change must start at the state level. Workers’ compensation is state based and so individual states will have to lead the evolution of this system.

All it takes is one state. One jurisdiction willing to step forward as the proverbial first kid on the block. The others will follow. That’s how good ideas spread. So, the real question isn’t whether Workers’ Recovery will happen. The question is: who goes first? Will it be Alabama? Why not Alabama?

Alabama is already at an inflection point. Recent and ongoing constitutional challenges to the Alabama Workers’ Compensation Act make one thing clear: change is coming. It’s not a matter of if. It's a matter of when and how sweeping that change will be. That creates an extraordinary opportunity. Rather than simply patching an aging statutory framework, Alabama could do something bold. Something modern. Something forward-looking.

Imagine replacing an outdated act with a new, constitutional Workers’ Recovery Act. One that reflects current science, modern understanding of recovery, and a benevolent purpose aligned with today’s workforce.

A new name wouldn’t be merely symbolic. It would be declarative. It would tell injured workers, from the moment they enter the system, that the goal is not to process their claim, but to restore their function. It would tell employers that outcomes matter more than transactions. It would tell professionals that their role is to support recovery, not simply manage exposure.

Yes, it would still be a legal system. Rights, obligations, defenses, and procedures would remain. But the lens would change. And lenses matter!

Bob Wilson has spent more than a decade laying the groundwork by educating professionals, proving the concept, and persistently advocating for a better system. His call for change is not radical. It is practical. It is achievable. And it is overdue.

Alabama has an opportunity. It can be the state others point to and say, “That’s where it changed.” An opportunity to become a true part of workers’ compensation, or rather, Workers’ Recovery, history.

Some ideas are worth being persistent about. Like Bob, I believe this is one of them.

About the Author:

This article was prepared by Mike Fish, an attorney with Fish Nelson & Holden, LLC, a law firm dedicated to representing self-insured employers, insurance carriers and funds, and third-party administrators in all matters related to workers’ compensation. Fish Nelson & Holden is a member of the National Workers’ Compensation Defense Network. If you have any questions about this article or Alabama workers’ compensation in general, please contact Fish by e-mailing him at mfish@fishnelson.com or by calling him directly at 205-332-1448.