Today’s issue of WorkCompRecap features the release of another edition of WCRI’s CompScope Medical Benchmarks, which examined the Minnesota system and found that medical payments per claim decreased 4% in 2020/2021, followed by a slight drop of 2% in 2021/2022, mainly driven by decreases in utilization of medical services, likely related to the pandemic.
WCRI noted that stay-at-home orders and temporary suspensions of nonemergency surgeries, coupled with delays and avoidance of medical care due to concerns about COVID-19, led to substantial decreases in medical services used by the general public, and issues with hospital capacity and labor shortages also hindered the delivery of medical services in the first two years of the pandemic. Other key findings included that medical payments per claim in Minnesota were lower than in many study states, with most key components lower or typical.