Today’s issue of WorkCompRecap features the release of a new study from WCRI that found Hospital outpatient payments were higher and growing faster in states with percent-of-charge-based fee regulations or no fee schedules.
The latest annual update to WCRI’s Hospital Outpatient Payment Index: Interstate Variations and Policy Analysis compared hospital payments for a group of common outpatient surgeries in workers’ comp across 36 states from 2005 to 2020. Key findings included that hospital payments per surgical episode in percent-of-charge states were 69-217% higher than the median of the study states with fixed-amount fee schedules in 2020. In states with no fee schedules, they were 61-134% higher. WCRI also found that hospital outpatient payments per episode in most states with percent-of-charge-based fee regulations or no fee schedules grew faster than in states with fixed-amount fee schedules.