Last week MedRisk published their 2019 Industry Trend Report on Physical Medicine in Workers’ Compensation. The report examines recent changes, including relevant legislation, regulation and research to look at trends in workers’ comp. They have seen post-surgical therapy cases drop by 26 percent in the last five years, which can be attributed to things like tighter utilization review controls in California and Ohio’s PT-first mandate.

From 2015 to 2018 they found that there was a 11.19% reduction in physical therapy visits per case on average. In their report they said the change was driven by factors including quality management practices such as the application of evidence-based guidelines, expert providers and clinical recommendations. The duration of physical therapy care was down by 24.97 percent over that same time frame too.

“The trend toward non-surgical treatment, fueled by recent conservative care studies and some states’ ‘PT-first’ initiatives, continues to impact the industry,” said MedRisk’s Chief Clinical and Product Officer Mary O’Donoghue.

“While per-unit costs are slightly higher in comp, the vast majority of these costs come from utilization,” O’Donoghue said.

NCCI says that workers’ comp patients are 45 percent more likely to receive PT than group health, and workers’ comp patients receive 50 percent more visits with 20 percent more modalities per visit than group health counterparts. The utilization of physical medicine in workers’ comp is significantly higher than group health, 268 percent, which makes up a big part of the total cost differential between the two.

Read more here and read the report here.