This 21st edition CompScope™ Benchmarks study for Minnesota 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 Minnesota 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.

Minnesota implemented multiple policy changes in recent years. Effective January 2016, Minnesota adopted a Medicare diagnosis-related group-based fee schedule for hospital inpatient care. CompScope™ Medical Benchmarks for Minnesota, 21st Edition analyzed the impact of this policy initiative with 39 months of data post-change (Yang, 2020). Effective October 2018, Minnesota enacted House File 3873. This comprehensive reform legislation changed many aspects of the state’s workers’ compensation system, such as adoption of Medicare-based fee schedules for hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgery center services, increases in income benefits for workers, and establishment of a rebuttable presumption that post-traumatic stress disorder is work-related for first responders. This study includes up to 18 months of data following the adoption of the new fee schedules in October 2018. The next edition of the CompScope™ Medical Benchmarks study will examine the impact of these fee schedule changes in detail. For the provisions regarding income benefits, this study includes up to 12 months of injuries post-reform. Given the nature of these provisions, it is too early to see their material impact in this report; future editions of CompScope™ Benchmarks will continue to monitor the impact of these provisions with more mature claims.

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 Minnesota, 21st Edition. Rebecca Yang. April 2021. WC-21-10.

Copyright: WCRI