New WCRI CompScope™ Research Evaluate Prices and Tendencies in 18 State Staff’ Compensation Techniques

New WCRI CompScope ?? Studies compare costs and trends among 18 state workers? Remuneration systems

• 04/09/21
• WorkersCompensation.com

Cambridge, MA (WorkersCompensation.com) – A new series of studies, CompScope ™ Benchmarks, 21st Edition, from the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI), provides an in-depth analysis of cost-per-loss and other performance metrics for 18 government employee compensation schemes for claims with experience up to March 2020 for injuries up to and including 2019.

“The CompScope ™ studies can help policymakers and other stakeholders identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in a variety of components of the compensation system,” said Ramona Tanabe, WCRI executive vice president and advisor. “The studies include experience with claims up to March 2020, at the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). They are therefore a good basis for assessing the impact of the virus on employee claims for damages.”

The 18 states 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. There are individual reports for each state except Arkansas, Iowa, and Tennessee. The government studies examine the time from injury to first compensation payment, the average total cost per claim, the average payment per health care claim, and the average payment per compensation claim, and the potential impact of government outcomes on system characteristics and processes.

The following are sample results for some of the study states:

• California: The total cost per incident with more than seven days of downtime in California has been largely stable since 2010. In 2019, the final year of the investigation period, the total cost per claim increased by 4 percent, largely due to a 6 percent increase in compensation per claim.
• Florida: From 2014 to 2018, the total costs per loss event with more than seven days of downtime in Florida rose moderately to 4 percent per year for all loss periods. In 2019/2020, this measure increased 8 percent due to faster growth in compensation benefits and medical payments per claim in the last 12 month assessment. Florida cost-per-claim growth since 2014 has been faster than most states.
• Georgia: The total costs per loss event with more than seven days of downtime have remained relatively stable in Georgia since 2008 and are higher than in other study countries. Higher compensation payments per claim and litigation costs per claim in Georgia were the main reasons for the above-average total costs per claim.
• Illinois: The total cost per incident with more than seven days of downtime in Illinois has increased between 1 and 3 percent per year since 2012, based on incidents with a duration of 12 to 48 months. This growth reflects small increases in medical payments per claim, compensation payments per claim, and service delivery costs per claim.
• Indiana: The total cost per incident in Indiana increased 3 percent per year from 2014 to 2019 for incidents with more than seven days of downtime and 12 months of experience. However, these results mask the underlying changes in key cost components from 2014 to 2016 – medical care, compensation and service delivery costs (costs of managing medical costs and litigation costs associated with claims) – related to the House Enrolled provisions Act 1320.

More information about these studies can be found at https://www.wcrinet.org/compscope-benchmarks-21st-edition.

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