Boca Raton, FL – NCCI recently published a new research brief, COVID-19 and Workers Compensation: Permanent Disability, which provides a qualitative discussion on key assumptions related to the frequency and severity of permanent disability that may result from COVID-19.
Key Takeaways:
- Data on permanent disability related to COVID-19 is extremely limited. However, some permanent disability outcomes are anticipated to occur (based on other infectious disease outbreaks and anecdotal information).
- While permanent disability is expected to be a material component of the direct COVID-19 impact on overall WC system costs, other key assumptions—such as the infection rate and compensability rate—are currently anticipated to have a greater effect.
- The average fatal benefit for a COVID-19 claim is generally expected to be significantly smaller relative to the overall average fatal benefit due to differences in the average age (and dependency characteristics) of claimants.
NCCI also released an update to the COVID-19 Hypothetical Scenarios Tool to now include permanent disability. The tool was developed to assist the industry in evaluating the potential impacts COVID-19 may have on workers compensation losses.
What’s Updated in the Tool:
- Incorporate the potential for permanent disability outcomes,
- Add the ability for the user to modify severity and benefit assumptions, and
- Update the fatal severity assumptions to be based on modeled data, consistent with the permanent disability values included
Read the free brief: NCCI: COVID-19 and Workers Compensation: Permanent Disability (PDF)
Source: NCCI