Venerable NCCI Affordable Care Act Analysis
The NCCI Affordable Care Act (ACA) study was taken from their Workers Comp Update 2016 Fall Edition (page 54 of PDF). Please note that this is a large file. If you are working in the Work Comp industry, it may be worth your time to download the publication. The NCCI (National Council on Compensation Insurance) is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. They provide Workers Comp ratings for approximately 40 states among many varied data services.
WCRI (Workers Comp Research Institute) has published a few articles and studies on the probable/possible case shifting caused by the ACA to Workers Compensation. In fact, Dr. Richard Victor (Former President) presented the WCRI’s findings at their 2016 Annual Conference in Boston. Dr. Victor inferred t there was some evidence, while preliminary, that due to the ACA, there was case shifting from health care to Workers Comp. You may wish to follow the links for further reading.
Leonard Herk, PhD, Economist, performed a hybrid study of the accessibility to Primary Care in the year before and after the enactment of the ACA. Dr. Herk examined the differences between urgent care treatment access in the years 2013 and 2014. Just coming up with a baseline for comparison was very unique.
Conclusion
The conclusion drawn in the study was that the ACA primary care treatment did not “crowd out” the availability of Workers Comp treatment in the same urgent care centers per each state. The ACA numbers included Medicaid, expansion in certain states.
The other side conclusion – 68% of the first 90 days of primary care treatment occurred in the first 10 days of a WC claim. That would be expected, as WC claims age, the likelihood of referrals to specialists away from primary care would increase heavily within the first month. (my conclusion).
I hope this NCCI Affordable Care Act study will be updated periodically.
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