WCRI: Fee Schedules Help Trim Costs of Hospital Outpatient Surgeries

States with medical fee schedules have mostly been able to control costs for hospital outpatient surgeries better than their non-fee schedule counterparts, according to a new study from the Workers Compensation Research Institute, but there are some exceptions to the rule. Fifteen of 19 states with fixed-amount fee schedules had hospital outpatient payments per surgery at or below the median among the 35 study states in 2016. But Florida and Illinois, which were both fixed-amount fee schedule states in 2016, ranked fourth and 10th highest, respectively. Those states based their fee sche...