Workers Comp Attorney Involvement 400% Variation Between States

Workers Comp Attorney Involvement Varies Widely Between 18 States – WCRI

The Workers Comp Attorney involvement rates vary wildly between the states that WCRI studied in a recently released report.

This topic wowed the press and audience at the recent WCRI Annual Conference just this last March.   The press at the conference began feverishly typing when this data was presented by WCRI.

My live blogging of this session from the  March WCRI Annual Conference can be found here.

WCRI is the Workers Compensation Research Institute out of Boston, Mass.  Andy and the Institute represent a great think tank for Workers Compensation.   When I need good fresh WC data, I turn to them.   The rating bureaus such as NCCI and WCIRB provide good data also.

If you underwrite, adjust, or have anything to do with the Workers Comp rating process, this is one study you should download.   The data astounded me.

The chart in this article shows the striking differences between the 18 states in reference to attorney involvement.

According to WCRI

“According to the study, the percentage of claims with worker attorneys ranged from 13–14 percent in Wisconsin and Texas to 49–52 percent in New Jersey and Illinois, for 2013 claims with more than seven days of lost time and experience through March 2016. The median of the 18 states was at nearly 30 percent.

The question that I ponder covers three points – why

1. Such a huge variation
2. Do over 50% of files in either Illinois or New Jersey require an attorney? – astounding
3. Is the median of all states at 30%?

WCRI postulates an answer for all three:

The study, Worker Attorney Involvement: A New Measure, indicates system features may be responsible for at least some of the interstate variation. The report focuses on the two states among the lowest on this measure (Wisconsin and Texas) and the two states among the highest (Illinois and New Jersey), and discusses the system features that may be contributing to these states’ results based on findings from WCRI’s CompScope™ Benchmarks studies.

The 18 states included in this study are Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. These states were selected because they are geographically diverse, represent a range of system features, and represent the range of states that are higher, near the middle, and lower on costs per claim.

The data structure analyzed  for Workers Comp Attorney involvement by WCRI was enormous –

The analysis in this report uses data from 24 data sources, including national and regional insurers, claims administration organizations, state funds, and self-insured employers. The data are collected in the WCRI Detailed Benchmark/Evaluation (DBE) database, which includes about 7.5 million claims that are reasonably representative of the entire system in each of the 18 states, including all market segments: self-insurance, residual market, voluntary insurance, and state funds.

To download this study on Workers Comp attorney involvement, visit https://www.wcrinet.org/reports/wcri-flashreport-worker-attorney-involvement-a-new-measure . The authors of this study are Rebecca (Rui) Yang, Karen Rothkin, and Roman Dolinschi.

BTW, WCRI does not pay J&L Risk Management Consultants or myself any advertising revenue.   My opinions on their studies are written of my own volition.   They do provide me a copy of certain studies gratis if I request them.

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