Workers' compensation costs for employers could rise steeply as a result of a decision by the American Medical Association to reclassify obesity as a treatable disease, a new report contends.

The report by the California Workers' Compensation Institute (CWCI), prompted by AMA's mid-June decision to approve a resolution reclassifying obesity as “a disease state,” says the AMA effectively declared that one third of all Americans suffer from a medical condition that requires treatment.

To quantify the potential impact, the CWCI research determined that paid losses on claims with the obesity co-morbidity averaged $116,437, or 81.3 percent more than those without; and that these claims averaged nearly 35 weeks of lost time, or 80 percent more than the 19-week average for claims without the obesity co-morbidity.