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April 19, 2024
Workers Compensation Bill 2024: One percent of employee’s salary to contribute to workers’ compensation fund in Kenya.

April 15, 2024
Colorado Worker Shows Head Injury Happened as a Consequence of a Knock on the Head at Work

April 4, 2024
Callfornia Division of Workers' Compensation Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee Meeting Scheduled for April 17, 2024

April 3, 2024
California Division of Workers' Compensation Posts Adjustments to Official Medical Fee Schedule (DMEPOS)

The Department of Audits published its latest analysis of the workers’ compensation system Jan. 27. Heavy in its critique of State Fund’s and the Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Workers’ Compensation’s (DWC) databases and data capture processes, the report did conclude that recent changes to the system if applied to last year’s claims would have yielded substantial savings.

The report is titled, California's Workers' Compensation Program: The Medical Payment System Does Not Adequately Control the Costs to Employers to Treat Injured Workers or Allow for Adequate Monitoring of System Costs and Patient Care. 

Focusing on $14.5 million of the $43 million in identifiable facility fee payments to surgical centers State Fund processed through its medical bill review database during 2002, the auditors were able to glean an average savings of $8.4 million, or 58 percent.

The auditors also examined approximately $76 million of the total $91.7 million State Fund paid for prescription drugs in 2002 and estimate that it would have saved $18 million, or 24 percent, had the new reforms been in place during that year.

There is a potential for significant savings the report pointed out. For example the average amount State Fund paid to individual surgical centers for the use of their facilities sometimes exceeded 300 percent of the Medicare's ambulatory surgical center (ASC) fee schedule, adjusted to reflect the highest California wage index.

Recent legislation put a significant number of saving potentials on the table for carriers, but the auditors warned that unless carriers and the DWC do their part to scoop up all the savings available, 2003’s results may not be as favorable.