NU Online News Service, Sept. 23, 10:32 a.m.EDT

Medical care and wage replacement costs for treating obeseinjured workers are significantly higher than for those with normalweight, according to an industry study.

The National Council on Compensation Insurance said it foundthat for claims lasting a year, obese claims are 2.8-times moreexpensive than non-obese claims at the 12-month maturity, but thiscost difference climbs to a factor of 4.5 at the three-yearmaturity and to 5.3 at the five-year maturity.

"A possible reason for such dissimilarity in development may bethe longer duration of obese claims, although at this point, due todata limitations, this cannot be confirmed with confidence," thereport noted.

In a statement with the report, NCCI said there is "increasingevidence that obesity contributes to the cost of medical care inworkers' compensation, and that this contribution is significant inmagnitude."

NCCI noted a recent study of workers' comp claims of DukeUniversity employees showing that, for the morbidly obese, themedical costs per-100 full-time-equivalent employees are nearlyseven times as high as for employees of recommended weight.

The Duke study found that employees in the highest obesityclass, when compared with employees of recommended weight on an FTE(full-time equivalent) basis, filed twice as many claims, had 13times as many lost workdays, and experienced medical and indemnitycosts that were 7- and 11 times as high, respectively.

On a per-claim basis, the Duke analysis reported the percentagedifference between obese employees and employees of normal weightto be even higher for indemnity payments than it is for medicalcosts.

In its own study, NCCI looked at evidence of the contribution ofobesity to the medical costs of workers' comp as generalized to aset of claims that comprises 36 states and nine injury years.

NCCI said its findings on how the cost difference between "obeseclaims" and comparable "non-obese claims" develops as claims matureoffers important guidance for reserving and ratemaking.

The study found that
the cost difference at the five-year maturity point for claims isless for females than for males.

NCCI said mandatory utilization review and, in particular,mandatory bill review, significantly reduce the cost differencebetween obese and non-obese claims.