WCIRB Reports 3.8% Drop in Medical Payments for 2019

Overall medical payments and payments per claim continued to decline in 2019, with pharmaceuticals experiencing sharp declines in payments, according to the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California. The WCIRB on Thursday released a report on aggregate medical payment trends showing that the approximately $2 billion in medical payments represented a 3.8% decline over medical payments made in 2018. WCIRB data shows that the number of claims increased 1.1% to 654,000 last year, but the 14 million paid medical transactions were down 5.5% compared to 2018. According to t...