Today’s issue of WorkCompRecap features the release of the 7th edition of WCRI’s Hospital Outpatient Payment Index: Interstate Variations and Policy Analysis, which compares hospital payments for a group of common outpatient surgeries in workers’ comp across 35 states from 2005 to 2016.
Key findings from the latest edition included that that states with percent-of-charge-based fee regulations had substantially higher hospital outpatient payments per surgical episode than states with fixed-amount fee schedules: 30-196% higher than the median of the study states with fixed-amount fee schedules in 2016. States with no fee schedules also had 38-143% higher payments per episode. WCRI also noted that payments per episode in most states with percent-of-charge-based fee regulations or no fee schedules also grew faster than fixed-amount states. For context, the study also compares the average workers’ comp payments and Medicare rates for the most common group of surgical procedures across states.
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