How workers fare under work comp varies across states

That’s the top takeaway from the second presentation at WCRI’s annual meeting.

The researchers interviewed 6000 injured workers on topics including access to and satisfaction with health care, recovery of health and functioning, and speed/sustainability of return to work. (preliminary findings, results may change); efforts were made to control for factors that might affect results.

Across the 15 states, “substantial” return to work varied from 91% in IN to 81% in GA (sustained across at least 30 days, with the median of 14%.

My reaction is probably same as your’s; that’s awful.

Digging into the data indicates there’s a lot more to this.

• there’s a very solid improvement in health status across the surveyed population post injury;
• however the average respondent is still significantly less functional/has a significantly lower health status post-injury
• on average one in six injured workers reported “big problems” getting the medical services they wanted. (I know, that care may or may not be medically necessary or indicated)
  • a third of those workers said the problem was due to their employer or insurer discouraging them from going to a provider they wanted to see or getting a procedure (again, paraphrasing).
• 14% of workers were “very dissatisfied” with overall medical care
• Wisconsin consistently ranked better than most or all other study states; it’s also one of the highest medical cost states.
  • David Deitz MD noted that all the research into health care costs and quality show no correlation between expenditures and outcomes.

Kudos to WCRI for conducting this research; ultimately the work comp system and stakeholders therein should be judged based on outcomes.  That said, don’t make the mistake of taking results at face value.

Digging into data always reveals details that may confound or contradict initial impressions.