Jul

Is work comp going to get any better?

Posted by Joe Paduda on Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 | Comments

Rising medical severity. The worst combined ratio in a decade. Inadequate reserves. Stubbornly slack employment demand. Premiums down a full 23 percent over the last six years.
Things can’t get any worse, right?
Right?
Before we answer that, consider many asked the same question a year ago, and here we are. The most important single factor is employment – rising employment makes a lot of these issues way less significant. Employment drives premium dollars, which increases money available for additions to reserves. To say employment growth has been “disappointing” is to understate just how weak its been. Until employment growth increases significantly, comp writers are going to be running to catch up.
Specifically, they’re trying to increase premiums written to reverse the seemingly-intractable increase in the combined ratio. According to Fitch, the workers comp industry’s combined is at a ten year high at 117, a full 9.5 points above the average for the decade. There’s no doubt the 23 percent decline in premiums we’ve seen over the last five years was the big driver of the high combined.
There’s also no doubt rising medical severity coupled with reserve deficiencies are going to make improvements to the combined a “heavy lift”.
I’ll bang on this drum again – many payers have no idea what their opioid-addicted claimants are going to cost them. With opioids accounting for almost a quarter of all work comp drug spend, and the long-term usage of these drugs increasing everywhere (except California!), and few payers fully grasping the significance of this, the picture is ugly.
Being an optimist by nature, I’m hoping
a) employment picks up dramatically;
b) carriers don’t cross the stupid line when it comes to pricing;
c) insurers get a grasp on the cost of opioids and get serious;
d) regulators support that effort; and
e) employers start investing in safety, screening, and loss prevention.
Or at least two out of five.

Jul

Physician dispensing in comp – two small victories

Posted by Joe Paduda on Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 | Comments

Yesterday the Illinois Workers Comp Commission voted in favor of a regulation that would tie reimbursement of physician dispensed drugs to the price set by the original manufacturer. While this regulation has to pass thru a legislative committee before it can be implemented, that was good news indeed for Illinois’ work comp claimants, employers, and taxpayers.
The meeting was well-attended, and included representatives from the insurance industry, health care providers, PBMs (yours truly and others) and industry trade groups.
Noticeably absent were the drug chains, including Walgreens. I’m at a loss to understand this, as the WCRI report released last week showed 62% of pharmacy costs in IL are from physician-dispensed drugs. Those patients are NOT going to their corner pharmacy if they are getting their meds from their docs.
When patients get their medications from their doctors, they are at greater risk as the doc likely isn’t fully aware of the other medications the patient is taking, a risk that would be substantially reduced if they went to their pharmacy, where the pharmacist likely knows if there’s going to be a problem due to an interaction between the new drug and the patient’s current medications. Walgreens et al knows this is one of their big value propositions – the added safety inherent in going to your pharmacist.
From a purely financial point of view, the chain drug stores are missing out on thousands of store visits as well, where the claimant picks up their meds and likely some toiletries and perhaps milk too.
There are over 1900 pharmacies operating in Illinois; if one was at the meeting they didn’t announce themselves.
On a broader front, the Federal work comp program implemented an almost-identical requirement about a month ago in a move undoubtedly applauded by everyone who pays income tax to the Feds. No longer will physicians dispensing drugs to Federal workers be able to inflate costs by using repackaged medications costing several times more than the same drug bought at a retail pharmacy.
There’s bad news as well, but we’ll save that for another time.

Jul

The hardening WC market – another indicator

Posted by Joe Paduda on Monday, July 23rd, 2012 | Comments

State funds’ share of the nation’s work comp premium dollar increased 7.1% last year, the first net gain in several years.
As state funds generally grow when commercial carriers’ underwriting gets tighter, this is yet another data point we’ve seen that indicates the work comp market is hardening
The report from AMBest (thanks WorkCompWire) specifically noted one of the reasons for state funds’ growth was a stronger pricing environment. Higher prices follow higher combined ratios: funds’ calendar year combined hit a very painful 134.9 in 2011.
This news comes on the heels of reports from agencies of firming pricing and indications that some larger employers are also expecting higher work comp premiums.
Anecdotally, several HSA consulting customers point to somewhat tougher underwriting decision making coming from home offices, higher rates, and more “selectivity” re new business.

Jul

WCRI – under assault by physician dispensing company

Posted by Joe Paduda on Friday, July 20th, 2012 | Comments

After the release of its much-awaited update on physician dispensing in workers comp, WCRI found itself under verbal assault from physician dispensing company Automated Healthcare Solutions.
AHCS, perhaps the largest firm in the business (and partially owned by Boston-based ABRY Partners, who also owns Gould and Lamb and York Claims), said this about the study and WCRI in an email to WorkCompCentral’s Mike Whitely:
“It is not surprising that this unscholarly work is the vehicle being used to deliver a self-serving message the insurance industry wants the public to hear…Despite repeated requests, WCRI has refused to make available its underlying data for prior reports, which leads us to believe that this questionable work has not been properly peer-reviewed and has not been validated by an independent third party.”
Talk about cranky…
First, this statement is from the same AHCS that has repeatedly quoted WCRI in its written statements supporting physician dispensing of repackaged drugs. Including at the last Illinois fee schedule meeting, where AHCS employee Gary Kelman MD quoted extensively from WCRI’s previous work in an attempt to justify the higher costs and utilization patterns exhibited by physician dispensers. Their advocates have also used WCRI’s reports and statements in Hawai’i, where they succeeded in delaying controls over costs for physician-dispensed repackaged drugs
Second, WCRI has a well-deserved and long-held reputation for unbiased, high-quality and well-done research. If anything, critics (including me at times) have lamented the time it takes WCRI to produce reports. Aggregating data from different companies, ensuring data quality, reviewing findings, and QA’ing every analysis, calculation, result, and formula before you even get to writing up results takes a lot of time and talent, and that’s before you get to writing up the results and fact-checking each and every statement, figure, statistic, finding, and conclusion.
Third, WCRI is funded by a variety of sources, which AHCS could have checked easily if they wanted to – insurers, state regulators, labor organizations, employers, and others. Or perhaps they did and didn’t want to mention the broad funding and support base enjoyed by WCRI.
Let’s also not forget WCRI doesn’t take stands or suggest policy – they never have. That’s not their function, and it is one they take very seriously.
For AHCS to impugn WCRI is a classic case of shoot the messenger. Fact is physician dispensing drives up costs, enriches a very few physicians, dispensing companies, and private equity firms (ABRY in particular), and risks patient safety while increasing disability duration, hurting employers, and increasing taxpayers’ burden.

Jul

Physician dispensing in comp – growth is exploding

Posted by Joe Paduda on Thursday, July 19th, 2012 | Comments

In Illinois, physician dispensed drugs accounted for almost two-thirds of all drug costs in 2010-11. Same in Florida.
Maryland – 47%; Pennsylvania – 27%; Tennessee 25%; Michigan – 22%.
The data are from WCRI’s just-released study on Physician Dispensing in Workers Comp, and reveal growth in physician dispensing that can only be described as “explosive”.
In Illinois, physicians’ share of all prescription costs increased from 22 to 63 percent of all prescription payments over 07/08 to 10/11.
You read that right; growth tripled over three years.
Even more revealing, the volume of scripts dispensed by docs grew from 26% to 43%.
You read that right too. In Illinois, costs went up more than twice as fast than the number of scripts, which means the physicians dispensing medications raised their prices dramatically. A specific example; the price of Vicodin purchased at a retail pharmacy dropped 2 percent, while physician dispensed Vicodin went up 66% over that three-year period.
Notably, prices did not change much in Florida, perhaps as physician dispensing firms and repackagers, responding to heavy political pressure, kept a lid on pricing rather than face added scrutiny.
The study reported on physician dispensing across 23 states, representing over two-thirds of all work comp benefits in the nation.
A couple other points deserving of attention. First, proponents of physician dispensing claim lots of benefits including increased compliance, lower cost, and more rapid return to work. Note that they make these claims without a single shred of evidence to support those claims. Contrast that with the overwhelming evidence – in this and other reports from WCRI, NCCI, CWCI and other sources – that clearly demonstrate the exploding costs of this practice, costs that are borne by employers and taxpayers.
Second, these proponents assert that limiting reimbursement to the price of the non-repackaged drug will mean docs won’t dispense (and thus won’t deliver the “benefits” noted above). Not true.
California instituted price controls limiting reimbursement to the price of the non-repackaged drug several years ago; over half of all scripts California are still dispensed by physicians, just as they were pre-reform.
There’s much more in WCRI’s study; lead author Dongchun Wang points out that prescribing patterns for dispensing docs are dramatically different than non-dispensing physicians, and docs have dispensed OTC medications and charged much higher prices than retail pharmacies.
NCCI reported physician dispensed drugs accounted for 28% of all drug costs back in 2008. Now, three years later, it could well be that two-fifths of drug costs are from physician dispensed repackaged drugs.

Jul

The Medicaid expansion and political choice

Posted by Joe Paduda on Monday, July 16th, 2012 | Comments

If Medicaid isn’t your business, you may be tempted to ignore the implications of the current kerfuffle over whether or not states should accept free money to expand Medicaid. That would be a mistake.
As all-powerful and influential as Medicare has become, the Medicaid expansion will make the joint state-federal program THE payer to reckon with, setting reimbursement, defining “care”, restructuring provider contracts and relationships, and dramatically affecting provider billing patterns and practices.
With the Medicaid expansion now up to invidiual states, we’re hearing some say “no way” and others say “Hell yes”. At first, this split mirrored political lines, but now it’s getting harder to tell which side of the argument a governor is on merely by the color of their political stripes. The indecision on the part of governors who would seem to be natural enemies of federal largesse is telling.
In every state capitol where the decision is uncertain, there’s fierce lobbying on the part of providers attempting to convince governors to take the money and expand Medicaid. Make no mistake – providers have a huge stake in this decision, and are pulling out all the stops. Perhaps the most powerful influence in this is going to come from states’ hospitals and provider communities – but mostly the hospitals. These are the ones most affected by the increase in uninsured’s, and they will be the ones that benefit the most – financially – from a Medicaid expansion.
States such as Florida and Texas are particularly important. 29% of the Sunshine state’s working-age population doesn’t have health insurance; bad as that is, it is better than Texas, where fully a third is uninsured. And these data are from 2010; it is highly likely those percentages have risen as a result of the recession.
Both Governors Scott and Perry say they will turn down the federal money (covers 100% of expansion costs initially, declining to 90% eventually), hospitals and other providers – currently struggling to meet the needs of very large populations with zero ability to pay for care – are going to be in ever worsening shape.
(Governors of Mississippi (27% uninsured), Alabama (22%), and Louisiana (25%) have also said they won’t expand Medicaid.)
They are going to have to make up the revenue loss from somewhere, and that “somewhere” is going to be from privately-insured patients. That will lead to health insurance costs increasing much faster in “non-expansion” states than in the rest of the country, which will lead to employers dropping out of the system, which will lead to more uninsured, which will lead to more uncompensated care…
You get the picture.
There’s already huge cost-shifting in our health care system, in effect a hidden tax on private payers, workers comp, and auto insurance coverage, a tax levied by providers desperate to cover the costs of the uninsured.
What does this mean for you?
If governors stand on principle and refuse the expansion, the result will be more cost-shifting, really unhappy providers, and higher insurance costs for everyone.

Jul

Work comp claim frequency – pretty stable

Posted by Joe Paduda on Friday, July 13th, 2012 | Comments

After an increase in claim frequency in 2010 as the nation emerged from the Great Recession, the trend flattened out in 2011, as frequency declined by one percent – significantly less than the average over the last 20 years.
That’s the word from NCCI, who just released their annual update on work comp claim frequency. [opens pdf]
So, this means, what?
Depends on who you are.
Service companies – TPAs, managed care firms and the like – are glad it wasn’t a steeper drop in frequency, as claims volume drives their businesses.
Insurers are pretty much okay with the number – frequency drives cost and they need lower costs to return to some semblance of profitability.
Investors in the comp space – and these days it seems like every private equity firm in the country fits that description – have another number they can plug into their HP calculators to come up with financial projections for this deal or that.
Employers were likely looking for a bit more of a decrease, as it would have helped their rates and actuarial projections (reduced their WC exposure).
Since 1991, frequency has been cut in half – a remarkable achievement and one that looked like it persist for years to come. The flattening out of the rate of decline is likely driven by residual effects of the recession and its tendency to dampen claiming activity; can’t prove that but with jobs harder to come by and not a lot of hiring happening in many high-frequency sectors, seems logical.
As the economy picks up steam – if it ever does – we may well see another uptick in frequency due to more hours worked at a faster pace with less-skilled and trained employees.
Here’s hoping…

Jul

PMSI’s Opioid Summit -Part Two, addiction

Posted by Joe Paduda on Thursday, July 12th, 2012 | Comments

The first part of the report was supposed to be followed quickly by this, the second – however events overtook me, and I’ve just now come back to report on the Opioid Summit put on by PMSI last month in Sarasota.
We now turn to Dr Len Kamen’s talk on addiction – Dr Kamen is an addiction specialist practicing in Philadelphia, with extensive experience in workers comp.
Dr Kamen provided this definition of addiction: “Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry”, that has these characteristics:
A. Inability to consistently Abstain
B. Impairment in Behavioral control
C. Craving; or increased “hunger” for drugs or rewarding experiences
D. Diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors
and interpersonal relationships
E. A dysfunctional Emotional response
Addiction refers to the loss of control over the intense urges to take the drug/substance even at the expense of adverse consequences – jail, divorce, losing custody of children, homelessness…
(The clarity brought by Dr Kamen speaks to an ongoing conversation at Mark Wall’s LinkedIn Group on this issue)
The discussion addressed the “chronic pain dilemma”, attempting to determine if the claimant is addicted to or dependent on opioids. There are three ways to think of chronic pain patients;
– Managed chronic pain patients – an opioid user on low, stable dose with return to function
– Dependent chronic pain patient – opioid user on escalating doses of long/short acting opioids, with high pain levels and low functionality
– Addicted patients – exhibits abusive and aberrant behavior, unstable with no identifiable pathology.
A session at the upcoming NWCI Conference focuses on chronic pain; moderated by Liberty Mutual National Medical Director David Deitz Md PhD, two experts on the subject will provide insights on: creating an effective pain management protocol; at what point in a treatment plan should pain management be utilized; are there effective practice parameters that have been developed to determine if a formal program of pain management is called for and if so, what types of treatments should be a part of such program.
There was a lot more to this, and I’ll be providing additional resources in the next post.

Jul

Integrating work comp claims systems…

Posted by Joe Paduda on Wednesday, July 11th, 2012 | Comments

Integrating claims systems with medical management, bill review, UR, and other applications is the holy grail; yet few payers are really, truly, actually “connected”. There’s far too much cutting-and-pasting, systems store pictures of documents instead of capturing key fields on those documents in electronic format, too many yellow stickies on the display stand, lots of toggling back-and-forth between systems, double-, triple, or quadruple-entry of claimant data – you know the drill.
Many reading this likely believe their systems are “integrated”. And many of these many would be mistaken. A survey we conducted in 2010 found four-fifths of claims handlers did not believe their systems were “fully integrated’; almost as many executives believed they were.
There are any number of reasons to integrate these systems, Acrometis has picked six.
They include reduction in network leakage and overpayment of medical bills; higher network penetration; better vendor management; improved direction of care; more effective and accurate state reporting; and enhanced overall efficiency.
Hard to argue with any of these, and even harder to understand why it’s 2012 and adjusters are still stuck toggling between systems, double-entering data, and cutting and pasting from a medical management system into claims. Not only does the lack of integration waste time, it also increases error rates, frustrates adjusters and other claim handlers, and increases medical expense.
It also makes it difficult for payers to comply with unique policyholder or customer demands, limiting the payer’s ability to compete for and win new business.
We are in an “interesting” time; the work comp market is hardening, medical costs increasing, rules and regs changing in several key jurisdictions, and customer demands increasing in number and complexity. Yet insurers and TPAs are still under-staffed, all lack adequate IT resources, there’s precious little time for training, and new competitors are entering the comp market, seeing opportunity to gain from the upswing in pricing.
What does this mean for you?
Successful payers are those that adapt, maximize their resources, and eliminate duplicate work and errors.

Jul

UCDavis – workers comp shifting costs TO other payers…I think not

Posted by Joe Paduda on Monday, July 9th, 2012 | Comments

A few weeks ago the folks at UCDavis published a study on workers comp, asserting that WC payers – insurers, TPAs, but ultimately employers and taxpayers – are heavily subsidized by other insurers, that, in effect, work comp cost-shifts to other payers on a scale almost beyond comprehension.
To quote UCDavis’ press release, “almost 80 percent of these [occupational injury medical and associated] costs are paid by employer-provided health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other disability funds, employees and other payers..this cost shifting leads to artificially low workers’ compensation premiums that should be used to cover wage replacement and medical care for employees injured on the job.”
Note – I wish I could add a lot more to this analysis, but I’ve asked UCDavis for a copy of the actual report (“Workers’ Compensation Benefits and Shifting Costs for Occupational Injury and Illness.”) twice over the last month, and have had no response whatsoever.
So, rather than wait seemingly forever for my email inbox to chime with the welcome news that Ms. Marjory Spraycar has responded to my entreaties, here’s what I make of this “study”.
First, there’s no indication that researchers Leigh and Marcin factored in settlements; those legal resolutions that result in the claimant assuming all future responsibility for medical and wage replacement issues related to their work comp claim. Simply put, if there’s a settlement, the claimant agrees that they – the claimant – will be responsible for the medical and related costs of that work comp injury going forward (this is simplistic and yes, there are variations, but generally speaking this is the way it works). Not Medicare, or Medicaid, or their Aunt Sally, or Aetna or Blue Cross – the claimant.
For Leigh and Marcin to assert that somehow work comp is “shifting cost” to Medicare et al for reported claims is just not reasonable nor accurate – if Leigh and Marcin have considered settlements (which, as i’ve not been provided a copy of the report, I can only assume they have; after all Leigh and Marcin are professors at a major research institution).
Next, I don’t know if they differentiated among states with no ability to close medicals and those where medicals can be settled. If they have extrapolated data from settlement states to all states, this would be a major error.
Third, they recommend we “Link premiums with company-specific injury experience rather than industry-wide estimates, which would encourage companies to lower premiums by reducing workplace hazards.”
I thought this was what experience rating and ex-mods did; perhaps I am mistaken. or perhaps not.
Finally, there’s absolutely no question work comp pays for treatments to help the claimant get healthy enough to return to work – even when those treatments are for conditions completely unrelated to the work comp injury, and especially when the claimant does not have other health insurance thru their employer or Medicaid. I don’t know if Leigh and Marcin put those expenditures on the work comp payer side of the ledger; somehow I don’t think so. Moreover, the failure of group health payers to deal with obesity problems shifts costs to work comp in a major way, one that – again, I do not think Leigh and Marcin considered.
There were a couple other articles that referenced the study; evidently (this is hearsay) home productivity and fringe benefits were included as part of the study’s analysis of costs due to work comp not paid by the work comp industry.
This is, to be kind, rather a stretch. The ever-quotable Bob Hartwig of III noted workers comp “was never meant to be a form of business interruption insurance, which is what’s being proposed here.”
I remain hopeful I’ll hear from Ms Spraycar or one of her associates at UCDavis. Quite frankly I’m surprised by the lack of responsiveness.
Then again, this is just a blog…

Category: Workers Comp