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The Workers’ Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) released “WCRI’s 2018 CompScope Benchmarks, 18^th Edition”, a report that analyzes trends and impacts on the cost of workers’ compensation claims in 18 states over time. They are benchmarks intended to provide stakeholders with data on income benefits, overall medical payments, costs, benefit use, disability duration and other metrics that have changed from 2011 through 2016, with claims experience through 2017.

This latest edition highlights results from three specific states, California, Indiana and Tennessee, who underwent workers’ comp reform recently. California’s average total cost per claim remained relatively unchanged, while indemnity benefits per claim increased and medical payments per claim decreased. Indiana’s medical payments per claim have leveled off after reforms; they had been growing significantly before the state’s reforms took effect. Tennessee’s average total cost per claim decreased by 6 percent in 2015. Authors attribute that to a 24 percent reduction in permanent partial disability and lump-sum benefit payments.

Virginia recently implemented a medical fee schedule for comp, which took effect at the beginning of this year. The state saw their average total cost per claim increase 4.8 percent per year from 2011 to 2016. In Illinois the average total cost per claim has grown between one and three percent annually since 2012. Authors note that recent changes to the workers’ comp system in Florida may impact future growth in the state’s average total cost per workers’ compensation claim, which had been moderate between 2011 and 2016.

The states involved in the study are Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

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