Cost of Workers’ Comp Claim Down in Illinois but Still High: WCRI

The average total cost of a workers’ compensation claim in Illinois has dropped by 6.4 percent since 2010, but the state still has relatively high costs per claim, according to a report by the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI).

The state’s cost per claim remains higher than most of the 17 other states studied in a the recent report, CompScope Benchmarks for Illinois, 17th Edition, the WCRI said.

“The 6.4 percent decrease mainly reflects the impact of the 30 percent reduction in the fee schedule rates for all medical services, which took effect under 2011’s Illinois House Bill 1698,” according to Ramona Tanabe, WCRI’s executive vice president and counsel.

The average cost per workers’ comp claim in Illinois 21 percent higher than in “the median WCRI study state for 2013 claims evaluated through early 2016,” Tanabe stated in the group’s announcement.

Indemnity benefits per workers’ compensation claim were also higher in Illinois than in the typical state, as were medical payments per claim. The indemnity benefit finding reflected higher wages for injured workers, longer duration of temporary disability, and more frequent and costly permanent partial disability (PPD)/lump-sum settlements, WCRI found.

Higher prices for, and utilization of, professional services led to Illinois’ higher-than-typical medical payments per claim, according to WCRI’s study, except for payments involving evaluation and management services.

Other findings of the study include:

• Litigation expenses per claim grew faster in Illinois when compared with the other 17 states WCRI studied.
• In Illinois, 42 percent of workers’ compensation claims involved defense attorneys, if the injured worker had seven-plus days of lost time — a higher rate of defense attorney involvement than in all other states WCRI examined.
• Thirty-three percent of Illinois claims had at least one medical-legal expense vs. 24 percent in the typical study state.

Source: Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI)

Topics Trends Workers' Compensation Illinois