NY Workers' Comp Initiative Halves Dispute Time

The New York State Workers’ Compensation Board said it is making significant improvements in resolving billing disputes between health care providers and payers, leading to significantly faster turnaround times.
Two years ago, the board’s processing time for an Administrative HP-1 Award (simple disputes) could take as long as two years. Current turnaround from receipt of HP-1 to when payment is awarded is less than two months, according to the agency’s July 24 bulletin.
For more complicated disputes that require an arbitration process (Arbitration HP-1 Awards), the current turnaround from receipt to resolution is two to three months (excluding dental arbitrations and a very small number of highly specialized arbitrations). The agency said there will always be at least a one- to two-month lag for these HP-1s due to regulatory timeframes for payers to respond/object.
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Analysts on The Hartford’s Q2 earnings call on July 26 peppered management with questions about the firm’s workers compensation business.
Workers’ compensation renewal written pricing between 2Q24 and 1Q24 was relatively flat, management said.
The U.S. labor market has been resilient and with continued relatively low unemployment and wage rate growth still in the 4% range, both of which positively affect our two largest and strongest performing lines, workers’ compensation and disability.
Asked about the impact of a new Florida increase in Medicare reimbursements for physicians, vis-a-vis workers’ comp reimbursement schedules, Christopher Swift said: “I wouldn’t say it’s going to change anything from an underwriting appetite or execution. We just need to make sure it gets into filings that the bureaus approve into our pricing, and we’ll be off to the races.”
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The commercial lines segment saw overall favorable reserve development of $29 million driven by workers compensation and commercial property, which more than offset the unfavorable development in commercial casualty.
Asked about growth plans for its workers’ comp business, Steve Spray, president and CEO, said the company was “looking to grow comp when we think that we can get the right rate on a risk-adjusted basis.”
“…when we can write work comp at the right rate today on business that we like, we’re writing it, and we’re looking for it, and we’re talking to our agents about it.”
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Workers’ comp had significant favorable development — about $39
Million — but it was at a lower level than last year.
Workers’ compensation net premiums written increased by 8% in the quarter, while the loss ratio came in at 50.7%, which compares to 37.9% last year, due to lower levels of favorable prior year loss development.
The loss frequency trend that Old Republic is seeing for work comp continues to decline, while the loss severity trend remains relatively stable.
Given the higher wage trend within payroll, which is the company’s rating base, the declining loss trend in frequency, the stable loss trend in severity, management thinks the rate levels remain adequate, even though they gave rate decreases of approximately 7% in the quarter.
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Workers’ comp renewal premiums were up 2%.
The company said it is seeing “continued increases in new arising claims across both workers’ comp and liability.”
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