This 21st edition CompScope™ Benchmarks study for Florida helps policymakers and other system stakeholders identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in total costs per claim and key components. The study compares the performance of state workers’ compensation systems in Florida and 17 other states, focusing on 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. The study also examines how these metrics have changed, mainly from 2014 to 2019, for claims at various maturities. In some cases, we used a longer time frame to supply historical context.

Data in this study reflect up to 48 months of experience after the Florida Supreme Court decisions in Castellanos and Westphal. The Castellanos decision in April 2016 declared the mandatory worker attorney fee schedule in workers’ compensation unconstitutional as a violation of due process. The Westphal decision in June 2016 ruled that the state’s 104-week limitation on temporary total disability benefits is unconstitutional as a denial of right of access to the courts. Florida also implemented medical fee schedule updates for all types of providers from 2015 to 2017. This study includes 33 to 63 months of data after these regulation changes.

Note that the results we report include experience on claims through March 2020, at the very beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The study, therefore, provides a pre-COVID-19 baseline for evaluating the impact of the virus on workers’ compensation claims.

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Florida, 21st Edition. Rebecca Yang. April 2021. WC-21-03.

Copyright: WCRI