Group health costs have been rising much more quickly than inflation and wages. Costs have been rising even more quickly for treatment of occupational injuries in the California’s workers’ compensation system. This creates major financial challenges for employers, especially those in industries with already high workers’ compensation costs. Furthermore, group health care and workers’ compensation medical care are typically delivered through separate provider systems, resulting in unnecessary, duplicative and contraindicated treatment, and inefficient administration.

Integration of group health and workers’ compensation medical care is an alternative to two separate systems of medical care. Under integrated health care, the same individual physician or health provider group administers treatment for both occupational and non-occupational medical conditions and integrates payment for treatment under a single insurance policy. Integrating workers’ compensation medical treatment with group health treatment offers employers the potential for significant savings and could help improve the quality of care and workers’ overall access to health insurance. Research also supports the contention that an integrated 24-hour care system could potentially provide medical cost savings, as well as shorten the duration of disability for workers.

The Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation (CHSWC) has partnered with the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley, to examine the feasibility of integrated care in California. To conduct a pilot project, partnerships between CHSWC, CHCF, UC Berkeley, DMS Facility Services, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 were established. The pilot is part of a carve-out agreement and uses Kaiser Permanente for delivery of both workers’ compensation medical care and group health benefits. The goal of the pilot is to identify areas of administrative savings and ways to reduce litigation. Savings are expected in medical utilization, indemnity costs, and administration. Medical services are expected to be delivered with fewer delays and disputes, enabling injured employees to recover more fully and return to work sooner.

CHSWC has issued a working paper titled “Comparing the Costs of Delivering Medical Benefits Under Group Health and Workers’ Compensation – Could Integration Pay for Covering the Working Uninsured?” At its October 22, 2009 meeting, CHSWC voted to create an advisory group to discuss the findings of the issue paper on integrating workers’ compensation medical and group health care. Subsequently, on February 25, 2010, CHSWC held a roundtable to discuss the issue paper in detail, get feedback from the advisory group, and examine the feasibility of adopting integrated care in California. The roundtable was composed of over 40 participants representing employers, labor, government agencies, medical providers, insurance companies, and attorneys.

Study findings indicate that total national savings estimates over the first ten years would be between $490 billion, based on National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) data, and $560 billion, based on California insurer data. Savings for California alone would be about $10 billion in the first year and $100 billion for the ten years 2011 to 2020 inclusive. Key reasons for the savings are that it is expensive to deliver medical care separately for a single condition. This is very expensive initially and even more expensive over a life-time of separate treatment. Additionally, life-time medical costs are very difficult to predict, and insurers have to charge a “risk premium” for taking on a highly speculative liability. Health insurers are only estimating medical treatment costs over the next 12 months, a much less risky proposition.

Based upon this information The CHSWC 2012 Annual Report made the following suggestions:

• Evaluate the administrative and overhead cost of delivering occupational medical care under workers’ compensation insurance.
• Disseminate the results of the evaluation and the opportunities and challenges of implementing an integrated occupational and non-occupational medical treatment and insurance product.
• Develop and provide specific details and resources on integrated care for unions and employers interested in carve-out programs.
• Evaluate the impact of Medicare’s implementation of its secondary payor rights with regard to settlements of workers’ compensation claims, and examine alternative ways to coordinate benefits between the two systems.