TriCare to Close 11 Clinics, Lay Off 74 Employees : Cost-cutting: High jobless rate has hurt business of evaluating injuries in workers’ compensation claims.

IRVINE — TriCare Inc., which runs a chain of clinics for evaluating injuries of workers hurt on the job, says it has lost about $600,000 in the last three months and is laying off nearly a fifth of its employees.

As well as letting 74 employees go, TriCare will close 11 of its 42 Southern California clinics. Most of the loss is from the expense of laying off people and closing the clinics, said the company, which had $47 million in revenue last year.

TriCare, based in Irvine, evaluates injuries in workers’ compensation claims, often in cases where workers dispute the diagnosis of their employers’ doctors. But high unemployment rates during the recession mean that there are fewer workers to apply for workers’ comp. Some may not be reporting minor injuries for fear of losing their jobs, and some are daunted by the maze of forms and legalities involved in filing a claim.

The long and the short of it, TriCare said, is that business is down and not likely to get much better soon.

That is partly because the business of evaluating workers’ injuries is changing. To hold down costs, company and worker now sometimes agree to an evaluation of the worker’s injury by a single doctor, rather than the expensive “dueling doctors” system in which each side enlists expert medical opinion.

But getting more of that business--known in health-care jargon as “agreed medical evaluations”--will take “time and concentrated effort,” Stephen F. Bullock, TriCare’s president, said in a statement. And it will “have a negative impact on the revenue and earnings of the company.”

The company’s profit rose for the first quarter of its fiscal year, to $912,000 from $848,000 for the same period a year earlier. But sales for the three months ended Aug. 31 dropped to $10.8 million from $11.5 million.

In anticipation of a tough year, the company has already laid off 35 people. It is now projecting a $600,000 loss for its second quarter, which ended Nov. 30.

This quarter will be a far cry from the six consecutive previous years of profits. TriCare’s stock, which once traded at $16.50 a share, closed Monday at $5 on the NASDAQ market.