The 20th edition of this study for Minnesota 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.

This report provides meaningful comparisons between Minnesota and 17 other study states on total costs per claim, income benefits, overall medical payments, use of benefits, duration of temporary disability, frequency and payments of permanent partial disability/lump-sum claims, benefit delivery expenses, litigiousness, timeliness of payments, and other metrics. It also examines how these metrics have changed, primarily from 2013 to 2018, for claims at various maturities. In some cases, we used a longer time frame to supply historical context to the system.

Minnesota implemented several policy changes in recent years. Effective January 2016, the hospital inpatient fee schedule in Minnesota changed from a predominantly charge-based approach to a Medicare-based, fixed-amount fee schedule. CompScope™ Medical Benchmarks for Minnesota, 20th Edition discussed the impact of this policy change using data with up to 27 months of experience after the adoption of the new fee schedule (Yang, 2019).

Effective October 2018, Minnesota enacted House File (H.F.) 3873. This comprehensive reform legislation changed many aspects of the state’s workers’ compensation system, such as adoption of Medicare-based fee schedules for hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgery center services, increases in income benefits for workers, and establishment of a rebuttable presumption that post-traumatic stress disorder is work-related for first responders. Data in this study cover injuries through September 2018 with experience as of March 2019, primarily reflecting results before H.F. 3873. Future editions of CompScope™ reports and other WCRI studies will monitor the impact of this legislation on costs per claim and other metrics in the Minnesota system.

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Minnesota, 20th Edition. Rui Yang. April 2020. WC-20-09.

Copyright: WCRI