Boca Raton, FL – NCCI recently announced the release of a new report that reveals key findings on physician service utilization across states.
NCCI’s Annual Insights Symposium (AIS) 2023 presentation titled Under the Microscope: Medical Trends in Comp Guide described changes in the utilization of physician services over time, from 2012 to 2022. During that period, average utilization per claim over studied states increased modestly. A decrease in utilization due to less severe diagnoses and fewer major surgeries was more than offset by increased physical therapy.
The new report, Physician Service Utilization—A Multistate Review extends the AIS research to consider variations in the utilization of physician services across states in a given year.
Key highlights & takeaways included:
- Physician service utilization differs across states
- Patterns of interstate variation have been stable over the past decade
- Utilization variations reflect state differences in injury mix, likelihood of major surgery, and service intensity
- Interstate variations bigger than +/–10% are mainly driven by differences in the intensity of nonsurgical medical services
- Differences in injury mix and likelihood of major surgery are lesser drivers of utilization variation, though significant in some states
The study’s accompanying webinar, presented by Raji H. Chadarevian, Executive Director of Actuarial Research covers an analytic method to deconstruct differences in physician service utilization between states into contributions from differences in injury mix and medical treatment. The Physician Service Utilization—A Multistate Review Guide provides a slide-by-slide examination of the key insights, data sources, and background underlying the presentation.
View the report: NCCI: Physician Service Utilization—A Multistate Review
View the webinar: NCCI Webinar: Physician Service Utilization—A Multistate Review
Source: NCCI