Mental Health at the Forefront: How Early Intervention and Virtual Care Are Transforming Workers’ Compensation

More than 80% of U.S. workers experience work-related stress. Across industries, these stressors span from burnout to workplace violence.

While isolated incidents are easily overlooked, chronic stress takes a serious toll on mental health and overall well-being.

Due to work-related stress and additional factors, “mental-mental” claims—those based on psychological injury alone—are rising. Although these claimants may lack external markers of injury, mental harm can be just as debilitating, if not more so.

In today’s workers’ compensation landscape, mental health can no longer be treated as a secondary priority. Accessible, cost-effective care is essential for successful claims management, whole-person recovery, and a healthy, resilient workforce.

The True Cost of Mental Injury

On average, mental health claims remain open three times longer than physical-only claims. Delays often stem from reporting inefficiencies, communication gaps, and provider shortages—barriers that contribute to prolonged treatment timelines and claim closure.

Additionally, half of injured workers with psychological symptoms don’t receive treatment until six months after their injury. When behavioral healthcare lags beyond 180 days, temporary total disability (TTD) days triple compared to the “within 90-day baseline”.

Reversing Mental Health Claims Outcomes

At CorVel, we believe there’s a better path forward.

By combining early intervention, compassionate case management, and intelligent triage, we minimize time away from work, improve outcomes, and support holistic recovery.

Because psychological symptoms can escalate quickly, timely action is critical. CorVel’s integrated case management strategy leverages the first 30 days to set claims on a successful course.

Here’s how our framework works:

• Within the first 24 hours of injury, CorVel’s early intervention nurse case managers evaluate injuries, determine immediate needs, and connect injured workers to care via telehealth when appropriate.
• With decisive action, case managers expedite provider referrals and tailor treatment plans to individual return-to-work goals and job requirements.
• During intake and beyond, behavioral health-trained experts evaluate cases holistically—assessing psychosocial factors such as pain levels, financial stress, workplace conflict, and social isolation—informing personalized accommodations and reducing escalation risk.

By intervening early, our team helps prevent psychological injuries from worsening or developing into psychiatric conditions like clinical depression, anxiety, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The Role of Tech-Enhanced Care

Technology plays a critical role in identifying high-risk cases. Through CareMC Edge, all claim elements, compliance rates, comorbidities, psychosocial indicators, and return-to-work estimates are analyzed using AI’s predictive intelligence to generate real-time risk scores. These scores are available from Day 1 and continuously update, enabling early and targeted intervention.

Virtual care also drives access to timely treatment. CorVel’s telehealth programs support multiple aspects of injury management:

• Mental and Behavioral Health: Our Tele-Behavioral Health program offers secure virtual sessions with licensed therapists and prescribers. Services include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), DSM-5-based causation assessment, and clinical evaluations, aligning with the biopsychosocial model of care.
• Chronic Pain: Our Tele-Pain Management and Functional Restoration programs integrate physical therapy (PT) with behavioral health to reduce opioid dependency and restore function.
• Workplace Safety: For catastrophic or traumatic events, CorVel offers Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) to help teams process acute stress, reduce emotional strain, and often prevent injuries from evolving into claims.

By enabling faster engagement with qualified providers, virtual care ensures high-risk cases are addressed before conditions escalate, and speed to care directly reduces claim costs and lost time. These advantages are especially crucial for mental health claims, where timely intervention can significantly alter the entire claim trajectory.

The Story in the Numbers

Mental health claims are more than four times as costly as physical-only claims. Additionally, 69% of mental health claims involve lost time, compared to 37% of physical-only claims.

Across states, guidelines vary. In California, mental health claims do not require a physical injury, whereas states like Texas and Georgia do. In North Carolina and Illinois, at peak levels, mental health claims comprise nearly 10% of total cases (10.4% and 9.7%, respectively).

Did you know? Transportation & Warehousing, as well as Arts & Entertainment, are consistently the industries with the highest percentage of mental health claims year-over-year. To help tackle sector-specific risks, predictive analytics is a valuable tool to inform safety and wellness strategies.

Regardless of jurisdiction, early action and tech-enabled care are proven to drive better recovery outcomes.

Driving Change in Mental Health Care

In workers’ compensation, the message is clear: mental health is not a fringe issue. It’s a cost driver, a compliance factor, and an urgent human concern.

Organizations that prioritize early intervention, leverage technology, and integrate behavioral health into managed care will not only reduce claims costs, but they’ll also demonstrate a genuine commitment to employee well-being, showing that both mind and body matter.