These studies help workers’ compensation policymakers and other system stakeholders identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in total costs per claim and key components.

They compare the performance of state workers’ compensation systems in 18 states, focusing on overall medical payments, income benefits, use of benefits, duration of temporary disability, benefit delivery expenses, timeliness of payments, and other metrics.

Additionally, the studies examine how these system performance metrics have changed, mainly from 2018 to 2023, for claims at various maturities. We analyze claims with experience through 2024 for injuries up to and including 2023, and in some cases, we use a longer time frame to supply historical context.

The 18 states in the study are Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. There are individual reports for every state except Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, and Texas.

The results reflect claims experience through March 2024, including non-COVID-19 claims. As a result, the study provides a detailed look at how the pandemic-related disruptions affected non-COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims in the early pandemic years (2019–2021) and more recently (2021–2023).

CompScope™ Benchmarks, 2025 Edition. Terence Cawley, Roman Dolinschi, William Monnin-Browder, Evelina Radeva, Karen Rothkin, Bogdan Savych, Carol A. Telles, and Rebecca Yang. April 2025. WC-25-03 to WC-25-16.

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