Staff’ Compensation Analysis Research Exhibits No Remedy Delays Because of COVID

COVID-19 has not delayed medical treatment for workers seeking workers ‘compensation, but it has reduced emergency care and other services for injured workers, a study published by the Workers’ Compensation Institute concludes.

Research by WCRI economist Olesya Fomenko found that there were no noticeable delays in medical treatment of injured workers in the first two quarters of 2019 compared to the same period in 2020. including emergency room, physical medicine, major surgery, and neurological / neuromuscular testing.

On the other hand, when comparing the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020, WCRI observed a certain decrease in the proportion of patients receiving certain types of services. In particular, the states hardest hit by COVID – Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey – the proportion of claims with downtime for emergency services fell from 31% to 23%.

“This is in line with the expectation that people would want to avoid going to the emergency room for fear of virus contraction,” the report said.

Olesya Fomenko

Fomenko examined data from 27 state compensation schemes to track changes in medical use. Their results are similar to the conclusions of previous studies by the National Council on Compensation Insurance and the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

In general healthcare, the coronavirus pandemic has greatly reduced the use of health services in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 41% of adults delayed or avoided medical care due to concerns about COVID-19, according to the WCRI study.

“In contrast, for WC, our results show that medical treatment for injuries covered by WC was non-delayed and even had a shorter duration for some types of services,” the report said. “This can possibly be explained by the fact that injuries submitted to WC are on average more severe than general health problems.”

The study found ample evidence that workers’ compensation avoided medical services in the hardest hit states. In Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, physical medicine decreased 4.7 percentage points and pain management decreased 2.4 percentage points.

The study showed that the decline in the proportion of patients using certain medical services was most pronounced in the severely affected states. For example, the percentage of injured workers using emergency rooms declined 4 percentage points nationwide, compared with 8% in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Across all 27 states, the proportion of claims with major surgery decreased by three percentage points to 17% in Q1 2020 from 20% in the same period of 2019. The proportion of claims with injections for pain management decreased from 9% to 7%.

In comparison, the proportion of patients in the severely affected states who received major operations fell by six percentage points. The proportion of patients receiving analgesic injections decreased by two points in all 27 states and the hardest hit states.

The conclusion that workers’ compensation insurance medical care was not delayed goes against popular belief about the effects of the virus.

Last December, MedRisk reported that injured workers were affected by the postponement of hospital treatments and physical therapy due to COVID-19. Some researchers predicted it would take 45 weeks to catch up on surgeries and other medical procedures, said Mary O’Donoghue, Medrisk’s chief operating officer, in a company blog post.

In April 2020, Jeff Rush, Worker Compliance Program Manager for the California Joint Powers Authority, wrote in the insurance pool’s newsletter that “Workers with pending claims experience delays in treatment, especially if they have to undergo surgery.”

In contrast to these observations, NCCI reported last December that the impact of COVID on emergency rooms was negligible. NCCI said the average time between the date of the injury and the first encounter in the emergency room increased from 1.2 days in 2019 to 1.4 days in 2020.

The same report concluded that waiting time for major surgeries during the COVID pandemic decreased slightly from 20 days in Q2 2019 to 19.8 days in Q2 2020.

“The measure shows that, in general, toilet-damaged workers did not experience significant delays in major surgeries during this period based on claims who had an operation,” the report said.

Alan Pierce, a plaintiffs attorney in Salem, Massachusetts who regularly hosts a podcast on compensation issues, said he was “pleasantly surprised” with the results of the WCRI.

“At the moment I can imagine a few customers who would have had surgery in the past year without COVID,” he said over the phone. “I can imagine some who didn’t get MRIs and their PT was canceled.”

Pierce said he would be interested in comparing the duration of temporary disability before and after the pandemic. He said an increase in the time injured workers remained on TD would suggest that many were delaying treatment and therefore recovering more slowly.

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