Lowering Premiums is Our Business.
Ohio’s leader in Workers’ Compensation, Safety, Unemployment, and FMLA/Short Term Disability Administration.
The Spooner Risk Control family of companies was established in 1975, when Tom Spooner uprooted his youngest son from his bedroom so it could be turned into an office. What started as a labor relations and HR consulting firm has grown to offer solutions for many of the challenges that employers face today.
Spooner’s journey into workers’ compensation started in 1981, when a client asked Tom to attend an Industrial Commission hearing on behalf of their company. The client felt they’d paid more than enough for this particular workers’ comp claim, but the Hearing Officer didn’t consider that a valid argument. However, the Hearing Officer suggested that Tom read the Ohio Revised Code Workers’ Compensation book, since it was clear he truly wanted to protect and help the businesses he works with. Nearly 50 years later, that remains the goal of every company under the Spooner umbrella. In 2017, Tom’s grandson Joe Spooner stepped into the role of president to ensure the company’s values continue to align with those ideals.
The progression to a TPA (third party administrator) was natural from there. After digging into the details, Tom Spooner found that many of the factors that inflate workers’ comp costs – including fraud, inappropriate medical treatment, excessive time away and both temporary and permanent disability awards – are preventable or manageable. Our claims management approach curbs the abuse by consistently monitoring activity and identifying problematic situations early.
In 1997, our sister company Spooner Medical Administrators was approved to be one of Ohio’s first workers’ compensation MCOs. These managed care companies were created to outsource the medical management of claims that had previously been managed by BWC internally. While acquisitions have lowered the number of these firms in Ohio, Spooner Medical Administrators remains one of only ten MCOs.
As our clients’ needs changed over the years, so did the services we offer. We took the basic principles of our proactive management on workers’ comp and applied that to managing FMLA, unemployment and absence management. When we saw that Ohio’s monopolistic system didn’t offer a solution for every business here, we began building our Professional Employer Organization (PEO) – Surety HR. Founded in 2017, our PEO not only offers administrative solutions to employers, but also boasts an option to be part of our self-insured workers’ comp policy in Ohio.
If your company has employment-related burdens – chances are, Spooner’s family of companies has a solution. We’d love to learn more about your business, what keeps you up at night, and how partnering with us can help. Click here and contact us today, and let us help solve those problems.
