Patent Issued for System For Determination Of Dynamic User Interfaces And Selective Calculations (USPTO 10,373,258)

2019 AUG 20 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Edwards, Paul J. (West Hartford, CT); Mumbert, Erik Philip (El Dorado Hills, CA); Shaffer, Karen A. (Orange City, FL), filed on May 8, 2015, was published online on August 19, 2019, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 10,373,258 is assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In some cases, an individual may be entitled to receive insurance benefits based at least in part on past wages that he or she has earned. For example, an injured worker might receive workers’ compensation payments from an insurance company based on his or her average weekly wages over the prior year. To submit information about past wages to an insurance company, an injured worker or an employer representative, such as an employee in a human relations department of an employer, might provide copies of old paychecks, screenshots taken from a payroll accounting system, and/or information manually entered by hand on an insurance form. A claim handler associated with the insurance company might then review the wage information and determine an appropriate benefit amount. Such a determination, however, can be difficult to perform in an accurate and consistent manner. For example, extended periods away from work, bonuses, and overtime pay may need to be accounted for by the claim handler. Moreover, the appropriate way to handle these situations varies depending on the jurisdiction in which an injury occurred.

“Individual jurisdictions have generated required paper forms on which information regarding the injured worker, including past wage information, must be submitted. The forms vary among jurisdictions as to format and required information.

“In addition to average weekly wage information, individual state forms may require display of such information as gross earnings and other earnings. Calculations of these values may vary among jurisdictions, depending, for example, on rules governing rates for overtime and double time. These values are in turn employed in calculation of average weekly wage values. Errors in these values may result in rejection of filings of required forms.

“As a result of variations in rules from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, required information and underlying formulas need to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Individual claim handlers and employer human resource departments may be responsible for injured workers in multiple jurisdictions. It would be desirable for capabilities for calculations and generation of suitable forms in multiple jurisdictions to be available without a need for separate application programs or for large programs that require extensive storage, transmission and memory resources.

“A wide variety of options may be available for determination of pay periods. For example, different employers may use weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, semi-monthly and other pay periods. Accurate determinations of past pay period begin and end dates may be difficult as a result.

“Note that penalties may be applied to an insurance company that fails to determine benefits in an accurate and consistent manner. For example, a state auditor might assess penalties, including interest penalties, when an insurance company fails to determine and/or document workers’ compensation cases in an appropriate manner. Moreover, note that problems might arise from inconsistent and/or inaccurate wage statement data provided by an injured worker or an employer, inconsistent and/or inaccurate benefit calculations by a claim handler, or insufficient documentation about the benefit calculations in a claim file.

“Systems and methods for improvements in processes relating to processing of workers compensation claims, including greater accuracy in determinations, while avoiding unnecessary burdens on computer processing resources, would be desirable.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In embodiments, a computer system for efficient processing of rules-based data input via one or more user interfaces for determination of workers compensation benefits, includes: a memory device storing computer-readable instructions, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, cause the one or more processors to: generate a user interface display comprising prompts for data indicative of responses to one or more questions, claim data and injured worker data, the one or more questions being determined based on an applicable jurisdiction; based in part on responses to the one or more questions, generate prompts for input of responses to further questions and payroll date information; generate a display of payroll periods, based at least in part on the claim data and payroll date information, with prompts for input of wage data for the injured worker; receive user inputs of wage data; based on the received user inputs, via formulas embodied in the instructions, generate pay period gross wage data for the injured worker; based on the generated gross wage data, determine average weekly wage data for the injured worker; and responsive to determination of the average weekly wage data, generate a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data for the injured worker.

“In embodiments, a computer-implemented method for efficient processing of rules-based data input via a plurality of user interfaces, includes generating, by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, accessing at least one computer-readable file defining a plurality of spreadsheet tables, a user interface display comprising prompts for data indicative of jurisdiction and employee data; receiving, via the user interface, user inputs of data indicative of jurisdiction and employee data; based on the received user inputs, via formulas embodied in one or more of the plurality of spreadsheet tables, determining, by the one or more processors executing the spreadsheet application program and accessing the plurality of spreadsheet tables, a plurality of pay periods, and prompting the user for wage information for each of the pay periods; determining, based on received wage information, gross wage amounts for each of the pay periods; based on the gross wage amounts, determining average weekly wage data, and generating a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data.

“In embodiments, a computer-implemented method for efficient processing of rules-based data input via a plurality of user interfaces includes generating, by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, accessing at least one computer-readable file defining a plurality of spreadsheet tables; a user interface display comprising prompts for data indicative of jurisdiction and employee wage data; receiving, via the user interface, user inputs of data indicative of jurisdiction and employee wage data; based on the received user inputs, via formulas embodied in one or more of the plurality of spreadsheet tables, determining, by the one or more processors executing the spreadsheet application program and accessing the plurality of spreadsheet tables, a plurality of pay periods and gross wage amounts for each of the pay periods for at least one employee; responsive to determination of the pay periods and the gross wage amounts, determine average weekly wage data for the at least one employee, and generate a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data for the at least one employee.

“In embodiments, a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored computer-readable instructions, in a spreadsheet format, comprising a plurality of spreadsheet tables, having internal references, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, cause the one or more processors to: receive inputs of jurisdiction and employee data; responsive to the inputs, generate displays of one or more questions; based on jurisdiction and responses, determine a plurality of pay periods, and generate displays of prompts for employee wage data for each of the pay periods; receive employee wage data, and generate gross wage data based on the received wage data; based on the gross wage data, determine average weekly wage data; and responsive to determination of the average weekly wage data, generate a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A computer system for efficient processing of rules-based data input via one or more user interfaces for determination of workers compensation benefits, comprising: a memory device storing computer-readable instructions, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, cause the one or more processors to: generate a user interface display comprising prompts for data indicative of responses to one or more questions, claim data and injured worker data, the one or more questions being determined based on an applicable jurisdiction; based in part on responses to the one or more questions, generate prompts for input of responses to further questions and payroll date information; generate a display of payroll periods, based at least in part on the claim data and payroll date information, with prompts for input of wage data for the injured worker; receive user inputs of wage data; based on the received user inputs, via formulas embodied in the instructions, generate pay period gross wage data for the injured worker; based on the generated gross wage data, determine average weekly wage data for the injured worker; and responsive to determination of the average weekly wage data, generate a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data for the injured worker; wherein the instructions comprise at least a first computer-readable file defining a plurality of spreadsheet tables, having internal references, and the instructions embodied in one of the spreadsheet tables comprise rules, arranged by state in rows or columns, defining overall period units, a frequency lock value for the overall period units, and display controls for display of data elements comprising hourly rate data, regular hours data, overtime hours, and double time hours, operable to provide for updates to a single one of the spreadsheet tables responsive to a change in a rule in any state, and a single one of the spreadsheet tables includes rules operative for differentially configuring user interfaces for different jurisdictions; the instructions further comprising a reflexive question table, defined by a single spreadsheet table including data defining a logic tree connecting questions dependent on answers, jurisdictions to which a question is applicable, texts of questions for display and display formats for responses.

“2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise data in tabular form of question order, question text and available answers.

“3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise instructions for automated determination and display of pay period begin and end dates.

“4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the instructions include instructions for calculation of overtime compensation amounts.

“5. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise instructions for determination of overall period units and numbers of overall period units.

“6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise instructions for determination of pay period begin and end dates based on any of weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly and monthly periods.

“7. A computer-implemented method for efficient processing of rules-based data input via a plurality of user interfaces, comprising: generating, by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, accessing at least one computer-readable file defining a plurality of spreadsheet tables, a user interface display comprising prompts for data indicative of jurisdiction and employee data; receiving, via the user interface, user inputs of data indicative of jurisdiction and employee data; based on the received user inputs, via formulas embodied in one or more of the plurality of spreadsheet tables, determining, by the one or more processors executing the spreadsheet application program and accessing the plurality of spreadsheet tables, a plurality of pay periods, and prompting the user for wage information for each of the pay periods; determining, based on received wage information, gross wage amounts for each of the pay periods; based on the gross wage amounts, determining average weekly wage data, and generating a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data; wherein the at least one computer-readable file defines a plurality of spreadsheet tables, having internal references, and one of the spreadsheet tables includes rules, arranged by state in rows or columns, defining overall period units, a frequency lock value for the overall period units, and display controls for display of data elements comprising hourly rate data, regular hours data, overtime hours, and double time hours, operable to provide for updates to a single spreadsheet table responsive to a change in a rule in any state, and a single one of the spreadsheet tables includes rules operative for differentially configuring user interfaces for different jurisdictions; wherein the at least one computer-readable file further comprises a reflexive question table, defined by a single spreadsheet table including data defining a logic tree connecting questions dependent on answers, jurisdictions to which a question is applicable, texts of questions for display, and display formats for responses.

“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising calculation of overtime compensation amounts in accordance with values embodied in one or more of the spreadsheet tables.

“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising, based on instructions embodied in one or more of the spreadsheet tables, determining of overall period units and numbers of overall period units.

“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising, based on instructions embodied in one or more of the spreadsheet tables, generating a plurality of reflexive questions in a question order, and available answers.

“11. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored computer-readable instructions, in a spreadsheet format, comprising a plurality of spreadsheet tables, having internal references, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors executing a spreadsheet application program, cause the one or more processors to: receive inputs of jurisdiction and employee data; responsive to the inputs, generate displays of one or more questions; based on jurisdiction and responses, determine a plurality of pay periods, and generate displays of prompts for employee wage data for each of the pay periods; receive employee wage data, and generate gross wage data based on the received wage data; based on the gross wage data, determine average weekly wage data; and responsive to determination of the average weekly wage data, generate a formatted state form incorporating the determined average weekly wage data; wherein one of the spreadsheet tables includes rules, arranged by state in rows or columns, defining overall period units, a frequency lock value for the overall period units, and display controls for display of data elements comprising hourly rate data, regular hours data, overtime hours, and double time hours, operable to provide for updates to a single spreadsheet table responsive to a change in a rule in any state, and a single one of the spreadsheet tables includes rules operative for differentially configuring user interfaces for different jurisdictions; the plurality of spreadsheet tables further comprising a reflexive question table, defined by a single spreadsheet table including data defining a logic tree connecting questions dependent on answers, jurisdictions to which a question is applicable, texts of questions for display and display formats for responses.

“12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the instructions embodied in one or more of the spreadsheet tables include instructions for calculation of overtime compensation amounts.

“13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the instructions comprise data in tabular form of question order, question text and available answers.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Edwards, Paul J.; Mumbert, Erik Philip; Shaffer, Karen A. System For Determination Of Dynamic User Interfaces And Selective Calculations. U.S. Patent Number 10,373,258, filed May 8, 2015, and published online on August 19, 2019. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,373,258.PN.&OS=PN/10,373,258RS=PN/10,373,258

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