Florida is scheduled to dramatically change the way hospitals get paid to care for workers comp patients, and if payers don't get their act together, they're going to be paying more - a lot more - for medical care.

WorkCompCentral reports today that a hearing, tentatively scheduled for this Wednesday to review the change, will not be held if no public comments have been submitted. That was the case as of the day before Thanksgiving.

Here's why payers should shuck off their post-prandial lethargy and get their comments/objections/concerns in to DWC.

The revised fee schedule would have payers owing hospitals 174% of Medicare for surgeries and 395% of Medicare for other compensable charges. Workers comp is already the most profitable line of business for Florida hospitals, and this methodology makes it even more lucrative.

Clarification - in the original post, I noted that "according to an analysis performed by FairPay Solutions, this methodology will increase payers' costs - today - by 181% for surgeries and 330% for other hospital outpatient services." This was actually from FPS' review of the Florida Dept of Financial Services' 2006 analysis.

Not only are the hospitals going to prosper under this new scheme, work comp networks contracted with hospitals at a percent off charges are going to be rolling in dough, as the charges are going to be much higher, and their 'savings' are going to be as well.

It's not just a price issue - Expect to see many surgeries and other services currently performed on an outpatient basis shifted to inpatient to take advantage of the much higher reimbursement. Thus procedures which were being done in offices will now be billed - at the much higher rates - by hospitals.

This isn't just speculation. South Carolina put in a Medicare+ hospital fee schedule on 10/01/06. NCCI recently filed a 23.7% WC rate increase. Even though SC's adoption of a Medicare+ hospital fee that pays hospitals less than the fee schedule proposed by Florida (140% of Medicare in SC vs 174% to 395% of what Medicare pays being proposed for Florida by DFS), paying SC hospitals more has significantly increased medical costs and utilization in SC.

For more detail on this (and be careful what you ask for), see here and here and here.

What does this mean for you?

If you're a payer, higher costs - much higher costs.