Workers Comp Medical Costs Still Very Stable – Good for the Market
Workers Comp medical costs have been watched and analyzed by different groups such as NCCI, WCIRB, and WCRI. Workers Comp Medical Prices are usually the driver for Workers Comp costs overall. Workers Comp medical costs are likely going to increase over the next five years in very small increments. Let us look at the past to predict the future.
Will medical costs cause the pricing to change in the future? In my last article, the subject of medical pricing showed that Workers Comp price spikes did not occur as severely as many of the P&C lines. A decade of suppressed pricing was shown in one simple chart.
WCRI Analysis
WCRI publishes a free Workers Comp Medical Price Index yearly – in May. You can obtain your own 2023 Medical Cost Index here.
It is one of the great analysis freebies that you can download by giving them your basic info. WCRI will not spam you with a load of emails. This chart which looks very busy can be a great tool to see where medical costs have been and where they are going over the next few years.
The above chart is an index of Workers Comp medical costs since 2008. Notice how over the last 15 years many of the states’ medical costs have stayed near the 2008 index. The chart covers only professional services. I will not go into how the Fee Schedules are better compared to non-fee schedule states today. I was only looking at the overall workers comp medical cost increases.
I mentioned in the medical price analysis during the 2023 NCCI Annual Insights Symposium (AIS) articles that workers compensation medical costs have not followed normal inflationary pressures. Will that change? Looking at the above chart, I would say that small increases are expected in the future.
NCCI will cover this again at the NCCI AIS next month. I will write a live article next month when I attend the 2024 NCCI AIS Conference.
