San Francisco, CA – The WCIRB Governing Committee’s insurer and public members recently voted unanimously to amend the WCIRB’s January 1, 2014 Pure Premium Rate Filing to propose an additional 1.8% increase in pure premium rates to reflect the increased costs of the new physician fee schedule recently adopted by the Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC). The adoption of a resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS) fee schedule was part of the Senate Bill No. 863 reforms that were enacted in 2012.
The amendment to the Filing was prompted by a recommendation from the WCIRB’s Actuarial Committee which met on October 21, 2013 to review WCIRB staff’s analysis of the RBRVS fee schedule. With this amendment, which will soon be submitted to the California Department of Insurance, the WCIRB is proposing January 1, 2014 advisory pure premium rates that average $2.75 per $100 of payroll which is 8.7% greater than the industry average pure premium rate of $2.53 as of July 1, 2013. (The original Filing that was submitted on September 13, 2013 proposed an industry average pure premium rate of $2.70 which is 6.9% higher than the July 1, 2013 industry average pure premium rate.)
The Insurance Commissioner has scheduled a public hearing to consider the WCIRB’s Filing. The hearing will be held on October 28, 2013 in San Francisco at 45 Fremont Street in the 22nd Floor Hearing Room. Once a Decision is issued with respect to the WCIRB’s Filing, the WCIRB will post approved pure premium rates and approved experience rating plan values to the Publications and Filings section of its website.
Source: CA WCIRB