The computer models are called agent based models. What they do is they display all the many different interactions that occur between people who are involved in workers compensation throughout the workers comp process. And once we’ve got the basic model set up, one of the things that we can do with it is change specific components of that model. For example: we can test out what would happen to people’s experiences, their health, or the costs in the system, if we do less Independent Medical Examinations. Or, what happens if we shorten this part of the decision-making process, or if we replace this ‘component’ with ‘that’?
When we switch one component of the model out or change it, then we see what that does to costs or experiences or people’s health outcomes, and that allows us to test in a sort of virtual way using the computer models, and identify what the impact all these changes might have, in the moment.