As states across the country debate whether to implement or update a fee schedule, the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) released this study to provide policymakers and system stakeholders with a tool to do the following: 

• Identify and better understand the implications of different types of fee regulations on hospital outpatient costs,
• Compare hospital outpatient costs across states,
• Identify potential key cost drivers, and
• Monitor the impact of reforms.

This study creates an index for hospital outpatient costs for a group of relatively homogeneous surgical episodes. The analyzed surgical episodes are constructed around most commonly used outpatient surgeries in workers’ compensation. This study includes 20 large states that represent 65 percent of the workers’ compensation benefits paid in the U.S. and covers a six-year period from 2005 to 2010.  

The states included in this study are California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Hospital Outpatient Cost Index for Workers’ Compensation, 2nd Edition. Olesya Fomenko and Rui Yang. January 2013. WC-13-01.

Copyright: WCRI