The 19th edition of this study helps policymakers and other system stakeholders in Georgia identify current cost drivers and emerging trends in a wide variety of performance measures of state workers’ compensation systems. It compares the performance of the Georgia workers’ compensation system with 17 other study states on key measures including income benefits, duration of temporary disability, frequency and payments of permanent partial disability/lump-sum claims, overall medical payments, benefit delivery expenses, litigiousness, timeliness of payment, and other metrics. It also examines how these metrics have changed from 2012 to 2017. Claims with experience through 2018 for injuries up to and including 2017 were analyzed. In some cases, a longer time frame was used to supply historical context.

During the period covered in this study, House Bill (HB) 154 was implemented in Georgia (effective July 2013). This legislation includes provisions that affect many aspects of the workers’ compensation system. We include a summary of the key provisions of HB 154, as well as other recent legislation impacting indemnity benefits in Georgia. Also implemented during the study period, effective May 2014, Georgia changed the outpatient fee schedule from International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) based to Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) ambulatory payment classification (APC) based, with the maximum allowable reimbursement rate set at 225 percent of Medicare. 

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Georgia, 19th Edition. William Monnin-Browder. April 2019. WC-19-04.

Copyright: WCRI