Worker's comp quick roundup

See you at WCRI in Boston.

WCRI’s annual Conference is on for March 3 and 4 in Boston. This year’s agenda is both compelling and timely. I’m really impressed by WCRI’s focus on exogenous factors that are going to have a deep and lasting impact on workers’ comp.

• How Medicaid and ACA cuts may affect access to care and the cost of care for injured workers

• Bogdan Savych PhD will discuss how hospital closures will impact work comp

• Sebastian Negrusa PhD’s talk focuses on the effect of Medicaid cuts on claims reporting, medical costs and opioid utilization.

• The always-informative Bob Hartwig PhD will give his usual fast-paced view of all things affecting…all things. Buckle up!

Gotta be there…register here. Early bird pricing ends in a week…

Heat kills.

Great piece by R&I’s Nina Luckman on the impact of climate change on worker injuries and illnesses…top takeaway is…

heat related deaths more than doubled from 1999 to 2023, when 2,325 Americans died of heat-related causes.

Kudos to Risk a& Insurance for actively covering a topic far too many “thought leaders” are ignoring.

Enlyte’s Dave Torrence was interviewed in R&I, couple observations and more to come.

• Torrence noted medical inflation, tariffs, an aging workforce and provider consolidation/changes to Medicaid and Medicare are “top market forces”…

  • MCM take - well, yes those are all drivers, although the (unmentioned) lack of growth in employment is going to have a big impact on workers’ comp premiums, claims counts and claim frequency.
    Further, with few new jobs being created, workers gain more experience every day. As new workers get hurt much more frequently than those at work for more than a year, this will have an even greater impact on claim volume.

• He also states: “Price is kind of what it is — payers can’t dramatically affect charges from a macro standpoint.”

  • MCM take - I’m not sure what “from a macro standpoint” means - I do know that A) payers are more concerned with their actual costs than “macro” prices, and B) really effective payment integrity can have a dramatic impact on facility bills; to its credit Enlyte does have some capabilities in this area… surprised Torrence didn’t mention these.

• On drug spend, Torrence notes “35 to 40% [of total drug spend is] from physician-dispensed drugs [PDD] in office that doesn’t go through PBM,’’’

  • MCM take - not sure I misunderstood his statement, if he misspoke or has very different data than everything I’ve seen over the last few years. There’s certainly a growing problem with PDD, although it is limited to a handful of states. There’s just no way over a billion dollars of drug spend is from PDD HSA’s 20th Annual Survey of Prescription Drug Management in Workers’ Comp will be out momentarily with more insight into PDD

See you in Boston,