This study continues to monitor the impact of Senate Bill (SB) 863, a comprehensive reform legislation enacted in 2013. The reform provisions have various effective dates. The data covered in this report include claims arising during the 21 months after SB 863 became effective with up to 39 months of experience post-reform.

It compares California’s performance with 17 other states (Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin), focusing on the following metrics:

• income benefits,
• overall medical
• payments,
• costs,
• use of benefits,
• duration of disability,
• litigiousness,
• benefit delivery expenses,
• timeliness of payment,
• permanent partial disability,
• temporary total disability, and
• other metrics.

The study examines how these system performance metrics have changed, primarily from 2010 to 2015. Claims with experience through March 2016 for injuries up to and including 2015 were analyzed. In some cases, a longer time frame was used to supply a historical context for key metrics.

CompScope™ Benchmarks for California, 17th Edition. Rui Yang. April 2017. WC-17-01.

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