CWCI Publishes Report on Average Benefit Payments

The California Workers’ Compensation Institute published a report on trends in average benefit payments valued 24 months from the date of injury. CWCI reports average medical payments started declining two years before Senate Bill 863 was adopted in 2012 and continued through 2016, a post-reform decline that coincided "with the adoption of enhanced medical dispute resolution tools such as (utilization review) and (independent medical review), the beginning of the transition to the (Resource-Based Relative Value Scale) fee schedule, and a decline in spinal surgeries and opioid use.&...