Increases in average medical payments and average indemnity payments drove public self-insureds’ total paid losses up last year even though the number of claims fell, a new report shows. The California Workers’ Compensation Institute reviewed the initial report on fiscal …
A California Workers’ Compensation Institute analysis opioid prescription data between 2017 and 2023 from the California Department of Justice’s Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System builds on prior CWCI studies by tracking multiple opioid utilization metrics. The study examines …
A bill that would give a presumption of compensability to farmworker heat-related injury claims if an employer is found to be out of compliance with Cal/OSHA’s outdoor heat illness prevention standard would likely create more challenges than it would solve, …
A California Workers’ Compensation Institute study shows nearly half of all litigated claims in the Los Angeles Basin are cumulative trauma claims that involve physical or mental injuries from repetitive stress, motion, or exposures, rather than from a specific event …
The number of inpatient hospitalizations in the California workers’ compensation system declined 51.1% between 2012 and 2022, a new report shows. The trend was driven by declining claim volume, technological advances and changes in Medicare rules that allow more outpatient …
A well-known workers’ comp number cruncher and an actuary are calling Chicken Little on insurance industry warnings about the cost of COVID-19 claims. Health Strategy Associates owner Joe Paduda and Bickmore Actuarial principal Mark Priven dispute assertions by Moody’s, the …
California workers had filed 5,093 COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims as of Tuesday, according to the state Department of Industrial Relations, a pace that might lead to a lower impact on costs than projected by actuaries. The potential cost of the …
Workers’ compensation insurers are reporting dramatic reductions in opioid use by injured workers. In some cases, all it took was asking doctors to stop renewing prescriptions. A peer-reviewed study by Mitchell International and Utah’s WCF Mutual Insurance Co. found that …
Opioids remain the most common type of prescription drug used to treat California injured workers with lost-time injuries, but sustained efforts to curb their use are paying off as new data show that in the past decade they fell from …
A study on the use of spinal fusion surgeries in California workers’ compensation shows that in 60 percent of spinal fusion claims the initial report of injury was for a sprain or strain, a majority of the fusions occurred within …