Vendors, watch out for Price

First, the moral of the story: If you do business with Fort Worth and its employees, don’t do something stupid and make Mayor Betsy Price mad at you.

Price hit the roof back in January after a representative of CorVel Enterprise Comp, the company that has been handling the city’s workers’ compensation claims, showed up at a local hospital and asked “inflammatory questions” of family members and others the day after a Fort Worth police officer was shot in the line of duty.

She pretty much stayed mad about it. It didn’t help that several other complaints about CorVel surfaced.

Then in April, the Texas Department of Insurance issued a report that had some positive things to say about CorVel. But Price noticed that Fort Worth was one of only three municipalities that the department did not rank as a “high performer” on workers’ compensation claims.

“We don’t deal with average performers,” the mayor said. “We want someone that is above average to help our employee, especially in times of crisis.”

Sure enough, the city plans to switch the service to Dallas-based York Risk Services Group as of Nov. 1.

“Now we’ll see if York can deliver,” says Price.

This story was originally published August 19, 2015 at 5:47 PM with the headline "Vendors, watch out for Price."