Farm, ranch workers comp

For 13 years, Pro Group Management has been developing and administering self-funded workers compensation programs for industries such as auto dealerships and retailers.

But none of them involve cattle or horses a risk that workers on Nevada's farms and ranches face.

Figuring how to calculate the risk posed by livestock and developing ways to reduce that risk was among the challenges faced by Pro Group Management as it developed a self-insurance workers compensation group for the agricultural industry in Nevada.

The new self-insured group won licensing from the Nevada Division of Insurance last month. It's sponsored by the Nevada Farm Bureau and the Nevada Cattlemen's Association.

In the past, representatives of the two agricultural groups said, ranchers and farmers in Nevada could purchase workers compensation only in the assigned-risk pool the coverage of last resort for businesses viewed as too risky for traditional coverage.

The self-insured group overseen by Carson City's Pro Group Management seeks to cut workers comp costs for the agriculture industry by 20 to 40 percent.

In a self-insured group, workers compensation customers band together to fund their own coverage.

Third-party administrators such as Pro Group Management manage the coverage and oversee the payment of claims by injured workers.

A key element of the management approach is intensive safety training to reduce the number of claims and reduce their severity, says Robert Vogel, a vice president of Pro Group Management.

Many of the safety training programs developed by Pro Group Management for its other groups can be easily transferred to the agricultural industry, said Mike Olsen, manager of risk services with the company.

Back-safety training, for instance, is the same whether it's taught to a worker in a retail storeroom or a farmhand who bucks hay bales.

But Olsen says the heavy equipment on farms and ranches requires more attention to lock-out and tag-out procedures to ensure equipment doesn't start unexpectedly.

And the unpredictability of livestock presents another worry for those who develop insurance for the agricultural industry.

Olsen said the new agriculture self-insured group was more than two years in the making partly because of the complexity of the insurance issues and partly because farmers and ranchers are busy during their production seasons and don't have much time to talk about insurance for a good chunk of each year.

Pro Group Management is the largest administrator of self-insurance groups in the state. It works with industry groups including the Nevada Transport Association, Nevada Contractors Association, Builders Association of Western Nevada, Nevada Franchise Auto Dealers Association and Retail Association of

Nevada.