This study helps policymakers and other system stakeholders in Massachusetts identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in indemnity benefits, medical payments, and benefit delivery expenses. It compares the performance of state workers’ compensation systems in Massachusetts and 16 other states, focusing on income benefits, costs, overall medical payments, use of benefits, duration of temporary disability, benefit delivery expenses, timeliness of payments, and other metrics. The study also examines how these system performance metrics have changed, mainly from 2017 to 2022, for claims at various claim maturities. We analyze claims with experience through 2023 for injuries up to and including 2022, and, in some cases, we use a longer time frame to supply historical context. We also include information from other WCRI benchmarking studies to provide a more complete picture of the system in Massachusetts.

Note that the results we report reflect experience on claims through March 2023, including non-COVID-19 claims from the three years since the COVID-19 pandemic began (March 2020 through September 2022). The study, therefore, provides a look at how the pandemic impacted non-COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims in the first three years of the pandemic.

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Massachusetts, 24th Edition. Roman Dolinschi. April 2024. WC-24-06.