The new budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers includes a workers’ compensation fee schedule for hospital charges — a compromise on an issue that for years has pitted the state’s business lobby against the health care industry.
Scott Manley, executive vice president of government affairs for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, says the fee schedule doesn’t go as far as the group would have liked. But he called it a good first step to “rein in” costs for employers related to workplace injuries, as it would set new maximum fees for hospital care provided to injured workers under the workers’ compensation program.
In an interview this week, Manley noted Wisconsin has some of the highest costs in the country for common procedures in the workers’ compensation space, such as major surgeries and pain management. He argued that’s because the state is currently one of just five that don’t have a fee schedule for workers’ compensation medical costs.
“Although we recognize that the fee schedule that was passed in the budget is not as, you know, comprehensive as we’d like it to be, we think that it’s a very important and necessary first step, in terms of being able to get Wisconsin out of the position of being the most expensive state in the country for work comp medical procedures,” Manley said.
Ultimately, he expects “the rate that businesses pay for their workers’ compensation insurance will go down” to the extent that the fee schedule lowers medical costs in the program in the years to come. A recent study from the Workers Compensation Research Institute focused on the recent inflationary period found fee schedules “ensure similar or lower price growth rates” compared to the overall health care system.