This 22nd 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 (PPD)/lump-sum claims, benefit delivery expenses, litigiousness, timeliness of payments, and other metrics. The study also examines how these metrics have changed, mainly from 2015 to 2020, for claims at various maturities. 

Trends during this period reflect experience after the 2016 inpatient fee schedule change and Minnesota House File 3873 (enacted in 2018), legislation that includes changes in hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgery center (ASC) fee schedules, increases in income benefits, a rebuttable presumption for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for first responders, and other provisions. In some cases, we use a longer time frame to supply historical context. 

Note that the results we report reflect experience on claims through March 2021, including non-COVID-19 claims only from the early pandemic period (March–September 2020). The study, therefore, provides a look at how the pandemic impacted non-COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims in the early months of the pandemic.  

CompScope™ Benchmarks for Minnesota, 22nd Edition. Rebecca Yang. April 2022. WC-22-08.

Copyright: WCRI