This study helps policymakers and other system stakeholders in Virginia identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in total costs per claim and key components. It compares the performance of state workers’ compensation systems in Virginia and 16 other states, focusing on overall medical payments, income benefits, 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 maturities.

This report monitors the performance of Virginia’s workers’ compensation system in the four years after the medical fee schedule was implemented on January 1, 2018.

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 Virginia, 24th Edition. Bogdan Savych. April 2024. WC-24-13.