The 20th edition of this study for Georgia helps policymakers and other system stakeholders identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in a wide variety of workers’ compensation system performance measures. It also provides an excellent baseline for tracking the effectiveness of policy changes and monitoring important trends, such as the impact of COVID-19.

The study provides meaningful comparisons between Georgia and 17 other study states on key measures including income benefits, duration of temporary disability, frequency and payments of permanent partial disability/lump-sum claims, overall medical payments, benefit delivery expenses, litigiousness, timeliness of payments, and other metrics. It also examines how these system performance metrics have changed, mainly from 2013 to 2018, for claims at various claim maturities. Claims with experience through March 2019 for injuries up to and including 2018 were analyzed. In some cases, a longer time frame was used to supply historical context for key metrics.

During the period covered in this study, House Bill (HB) 154 was implemented in Georgia (effective July 2013). This legislation includes provisions that affect many aspects of the workers’ compensation system. We include a summary of the key provisions of HB 154, as well as other recent legislation impacting indemnity benefits in Georgia. Also implemented during the study period, effective May 2014, Georgia changed the outpatient fee schedule from International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification based to Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System ambulatory payment classification based, with the maximum allowable reimbursement rate set at 225 percent of Medicare. 

Additionally, effective July 1, 2019, Senate Bill (SB) 135 made a number of changes with the potential to impact indemnity benefits and medical payments in Georgia, including an increase to the statutory maximum weekly benefit. The data in this report do not reflect the changes provided in SB 135.

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Georgia, 20th Edition. William Monnin-Browder. April 2020. WC-20-03.

Copyright: WCRI