CompScope™ Benchmarks, 9th Edition

CompScope™ benchmarks provide the most meaningful interstate comparisons currently available for more than 60 system performance measures for fourteen large states. The states in this 9th edition of CompScope™—California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin—represent over 50 percent of the nation’s workers’ compensation benefit payments.

This comprehensive reference book provides useful information on two central questions:

·         How does the performance of a state system compare with that of other states?

·         How is workers' compensation system performance changing over time?

This report can help policymakers and others benchmark state system performance or a company’s workers’ compensation program. The benchmarks also provide an excellent baseline for tracking the effectiveness of policy changes and identifying important trends.

Illustrative findings:
 

• Costs per claim in Louisiana were, on average, 28 percent higher than the median study state, the result of higher indemnity payments per claim, higher medical payments per claim, and higher expenses. Higher indemnity costs per claim with more than seven days of lost time were the result of a longer duration of temporary disability. Workers in Louisiana were off work longer than workers in other study states—33 weeks on average, compared to less than 20 weeks in the typical state. Medical costs per claim, among the highest of states studied, were driven by higher utilization and higher nonsurgical prices paid.
• The 2003 Florida fee schedule reforms stabilized the rapid growth in medical costs per claim with more than seven days of lost time in 2004. This result reflected the offsetting effects of substantial increases in prices paid for primary care and substantial decreases in prices paid for hospital outpatient services. However, in 2005 and 2006, medical costs per claim began to rise, increasing by 5 to 7 percent annually. One factor underlying the 7 percent increase observed in 2005 may be the fee schedule increase for physical medicine services that was effective after May 2005.
• In Michigan, costs per claim were among the lowest of the states studied, 44 percent lower than the median of the 14 states. Lower medical costs per claim, faster return to work, and lower expenses to deliver medical and income benefits to injured workers produced that result. Lower medical prices were the result of both lower prices paid and lower utilization of most medical services. Lower indemnity costs per claim were the result of shorter duration of temporary disability and the statutory benefit structure in Michigan, which produced a lower average weekly temporary disability benefit rate than that produced  under the “typical” benefit structure used in most states.
• Total costs per claim in Pennsylvania were lower than the median of the 14 study states. Based on claims with more than seven days of lost time, total costs per claim were somewhat higher than the median study state, which masked several offsetting factors. On one hand, medical payments per claim with more than seven days of lost time were typical compared to the 14-state median. On the other hand, indemnity benefits per claim were higher than typical, and benefit delivery expenses per claim were also higher than the typical state.

The study used data from claims from injury years 2001 through 2006, evaluated as of March 31 of each year from 2002 through 2007, from WCRI’s Detailed Benchmarking/Evaluation database containing over 25 million claims. The report contains separate state reports for 12 of the 14 study states (California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin).