This 21st edition of CompScope™ Benchmarks for Georgia helps policymakers and other system stakeholders identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in a wide variety of performance measures of state workers’ compensation systems. This report 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 metrics have changed from 2014 to 2019. In some cases, we used a longer time frame to supply historical context for the system. We analyzed claims with experience through March 2020 for injuries up to and including 2019. 

During the period covered in this study, several policy changes were implemented in Georgia. 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. This report provides an early look at the possible impact of SB 135 on the percentage of workers with injuries whose benefits were affected by the statutory maximum. Additionally, in April 2018, Georgia introduced separate fee schedule rates for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), which were previously subject to the same fee schedule as hospital outpatient providers. In May 2014, Georgia changed the outpatient fee schedule from International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) based to Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) ambulatory payment classification (APC) based, with the maximum allowable reimbursement rate set at 225 percent of Medicare for both hospital outpatient providers and ASCs. The April 2018 fee schedule change established separate reimbursement rates for ASCs at approximately 210 percent of Medicare OPPS rates.

Note that the results we report include experience on claims through March 2020, at the very beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The study, therefore, provides a pre-COVID-19 baseline for evaluating the impact of the virus on workers’ compensation claims. 

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Georgia, 21st Edition. William Monnin-Browder. April 2021. WC-21-04.

Copyright: WCRI