To hear hospital lobbyists talk, you’d think Florida’s taxpayers and employers should subsidize hospital losses by paying exorbitant amounts for hospital care.

Yesterday’s virtual meeting of the State’s Three Member Panel (TMP) featured several hospital lobbyists and officials waxing poetic over proposed changes to workers’ comp facility reimbursement, citing the changes’ “fairness”, describing the TMP’s proposal as a “win-win” and the proposed changes as “reasonable”.

Ha.

After Hoovering hundreds of millions out of taxpayers’ and employers’ wallets for years, some hospitals want to continue forcing those taxpayers and employers to pay rates that are often 8 to 12 times what Medicare pays.  They cited an NCCI analysis that purported to show big system savings.

Unfortunately the analysis itself appears to be a state secret as it hasn’t been shared…so no one except NCCI and the Three Member Panel know what data was used, what time period it covered, the methodology employed, or anything else. That’s unfair to NCCI and to every stakeholder, unwise politically, and unhelpful as parties who like the finding can’t cite specifics, and parties that don’t like it can dismiss it outright.

What these hospital advocates didn’t discuss was the basic unfairness of Florida’s work comp physician reimbursement. WCRI data indicates the State’s docs, PTs, OTs, chiros, and other clinicians get paid less than their colleagues in every other state in WCRI’s report. The changes proposed by the TMP would increase providers’ reimbursement by a whopping 0.9%.

As WorkCompCentral’s Will Rabb reported in an excellent summary of the call,  the TMP is somewhat limited by statute, a challenge noted several times by Ass’t Director, Dept of Workers’ Comp Andrew Sabolic. However, Mr Sabolic’s words to the effect that it isn’t possible to define or determine “reasonable” (a statutory criterion for determining reimbursement) are puzzling. I’d suggest an analogy might be helpful (wish I’d thought of this while testifying on the call yesterday…)

Think of it this way; you pull into a gas station – which doesn’t post gas prices – in your personal car, fill up, and only after you’re done do you find out what you have to pay.

If you pulled into an HCA station, you’re going to pay about 8 times what the driver in front of you who filled up their government-issue car pays.

Under the per-diem plus outlier scheme that is kind of/sort of in place today (although many payers are basing reimbursement on a Court ruling essentially eliminating outlier payments) HCA – and some other mostly for-profit hospitals and health systems – get paid 8+ times Medicare rates.  And that was based on data from 2016; I’d suggest that it is highly likely you are paying even more today.

By any “reasonable” definition that is wildly “unreasonable”.

(A detailed discussion of this is here and here is an excellent report by Johns Hopkins researchers on Florida facility costs (non-subscribers to HealthAffairs have to buy it, but the summary is free)

I won’t get into the bizarre multiplier scheme proposal; suffice it to say that it is unique, hasn’t been used in any other state, is not based at all on what it actually costs a hospital to deliver services, and is completely game-able; any hospital can increase their reimbursement by a factor of 5 just by increasing their charges.

I will note that many hospitals don’t wildly overcharge work comp payers; many – but not all – not for profit facilities get paid less than 3 times Medicare.

What does this mean for you?

How is this “reasonable”?

If you want more info on why some hospitals are supporting this scheme, see here.

The TMP will meet December 17 to discuss implementing the changes; you can register here.

First, a clarification.

Last week’s post re NCCI’s virtual Annual Issues Symposium needs clarification.

Fair point.

If I had known NCCI didn’t have Q1 data, I would not have made that statement. However, Bill’s concern is valid and I should have been more careful with my choice of words – and will be in the future.

Workers’ comp has made remarkable progress preventing overprescribing of opioids to new patients – but there’s much to be done to address chronic pain and long-term opioid use.

One therapy that must be considered is medication-assisted therapy. From HealthAffairs comes new research indicating the long-term use of buprenorphine shows significantly better outcomes than short courses of treatment do.

Research estimates that 28 million surgeries have been postponed or will not be done over a 12 weeks period due to COVID. That’s a major reason US health systems are in dire financial straits…to date, average losses are $400 million. 

Colleague Peter Rousmaniere is having a very productive “retirement”; his latest post at Working Immigrants includes these findings:

• Nationwide, one quarter of practicing doctors are foreign born [emphasis mine]
• 23% of all science and engineering workers are foreign born (40% in California)

COVID will alter the US healthcare system – experts opine on 9 potentially significant changes.

One potential change will likely NOT include ingesting camel urine to cure COVID…despite a claim that drinking a glass of the elixir three times a day for three days will do just that. (btw, camels are notoriously cranky…one wonders how amenable they are when a urine collector involves himself in a very personal process… and would any injury be compensable?)

There is one bright spot…unlike some other unproven cures, ungulate urine won’t cause heart attacks.

What does this mean for you?

Be careful with assumptions, thank your immigrant healthcare worker, support medication-assisted therapy…and keep your sense of humor.

It’s about the details.

Anyone reading the quick headline from WCRI’s just-published analysis of employer direction may well draw the conclusion that there’s no difference in costs between states where the employee or the employer has the ability to choose the treating physician – a conclusion that would superficially right – but actually wrong.

A summary of the study notes it addresses “injuries that occurred mostly between 2007 and 2010 across 25 states in which either employers or workers control the choice of provider. It excludes states where workers can choose a provider within their employers’ established network.”

(I’m not sure if we’d see a difference if more current claims data were used as after 1/1/2014, full implementation of ACA may have affected claim allocation to work comp or non-work comp insurance.)

Note the nuance here; WCRI is careful to describe the “direction” metric as one dividing states into those where employers or employees have the MOST control. The “line” between employer-choice and employee-choice is really not a line at all, but rather a shading of white to black, with many permutations of grey.

For example, there are states where the employer can direct the patient to a specific doctor, others where the patient can choose from a panel, and still others where direction is only allowed if the employer has some sort of state certification.

Then there’s the ability of the patient to “opt out” for a course of treatment (Illinois) or change physician to another one, perhaps inside the panel or maybe completely outside the employer panel – after some defined period of time.

And let us not forget that employers can suggest, soft-channel, encourage, provide transportation to, or otherwise get an injured worker to a particular doc or facility in almost every state without violating the law – they just can’t FORCE the employee to go to a doc or choose from a panel of docs.

Or, as authors David Neumark and Bogdan Savych state; “it is common for employees to choose the medical provider when policies give employers control over provider choice, and for employers to choose the provider when workers have the right to direct this choice.”

A key statement: states that give “workers the most control over the choice of provider were associated with higher medical and indemnity costs among the small share of the most expensive back-related injuries…” In other words, claims that are harder to diagnose and where there is less unanimity in agreement on preferred treatment tend to be more expensive in employee-choice states. 

What does this mean for you?

My main takeaway is as it’s been for years – employers should do their damndest to get their employees to high quality physicians who know and understand workers comp.  And then get out of their way.