The National Council on Compensation Insurance said new research shows that the cost of workers' compensation medical claims is being driven upward by an increase in surgical procedures.
According to NCCI findings, the increase in the share of claims with surgery accounted for about one quarter of the overall increase in treatments per claim.
NCCI noted that from 1996-1997 to 2001-2002 medical severity grew at more than three times the rate of medical price inflation–70 percent versus 21 percent.
Surgical claims, NCCI said, involved more than twice the number of treatments per claim, particularly physical therapy and drug treatments.
Overall, treatments per claim were significantly impacted by physical therapy treatments, which constituted approximately 50 percent of all treatments per claim, said NCCI.
Overall, the most significant increases in treatments per claim occurred in 2000 and 2001, and have slowed in the most recent years, NCCI found.
Complex surgery and anesthesia went from an average of .9 treatments per claim in the 1996-1997 period to 1.5 in the 2002-2003 period–a 67 percent difference, said NCCI. The report said a comparison for the same time periods showed complex diagnostic testing went up 62 percent.
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