California implemented multiple policy changes in recent years. Senate Bill (SB) 863, a comprehensive piece of reform legislation, went into effect in January 2013. Results in this report reflect the state’s system performance six years after the implementation of SB 863. Assembly Bill (AB) 1244 and SB 1160, two major fraud-fighting measures, were enacted in January 2017. In addition, the drug formulary required by AB 1124 was fully implemented in April 2018.

The study compares the performance of state workers’ compensation systems in California and 17 other states, focusing on costs, income benefits, overall medical payments, use of benefits, duration of temporary disability, frequency and payments of permanent partial disability/lump-sum claims, benefit delivery expenses, litigiousness, timeliness of payments, and other metrics. It also examines how these system performance metrics have changed, mainly from 2013 to 2018, for claims at various claim maturities. Claims with experience through March 2019 for injuries up to and including 2018 were analyzed. In some cases, a longer time frame was used to supply historical context for key metrics.

The report is designed to help policymakers and others benchmark state system performance or a company’s workers’ compensation program. It also provides an excellent baseline for tracking the effectiveness of policy changes and monitoring important trends, such as the impact of COVID-19.

CompScope™ Benchmarks for California, 20th Edition. William Monnin-Browder and Rui Yang. April 2020. WC-20-01.

Copyright: WCRI