NCCI unveils new, more precise Workers’ Comp Medical Price Index
NCCI unveils new, more precise Workers’ Comp Medical Price Index
Insurance Journal; by William Rabb; 10/7/24
In recent years, workers’ compensation insurers have struggled to accurately gauge the precise trends in medical costs, and have had to rely on indexes that weren’t quite on-point: The U.S. Consumer Price Index is geared toward what patients pay and does not include Medicare’s reimbursement rates, which so many states now tie their workers’ comp fee schedules to. ... Comes now the National Council on Compensation Insurance with a new measuring stick, the Workers’ Compensation Weighted Medical Price Index. It was unveiled recently and has received favorable feedback from carriers, Stephen Cooper, NCCI’s executive director and senior economist, said in a webinar. “By taking the PHC and its construction, we’ve gone and re-created a similar index using similar methodology,” Cooper said. ...