Businesses may have fewer workers’ compensation costs if they allow the worker to choose their chiropractors. Cost cutting helps free up funds for other more essential expenditures and ensures the business’s continued smooth operations.
But it isn’t always easy to keep costs down. Besides operational expenses and unexpected expenditures, employee compensation can significantly affect a business’s finances. In some cases, compensating workers for injuries could cost even more than running the company.
Reducing Employee Compensation
Employers have several possibilities they can utilize to reduce employee compensation. One possible course of action is to allow them to choose their own medical care providers. Although it might seem insignificant, it has helped many companies keep their workers’ comp expenses more manageable.
A report published by the Workers Compensation Research Institute seems to support this finding. Released in May 2022, data in the report showed that the states where chiropractic care was most prevalent were those in which workers were allowed to select their medical providers. It, in turn, resulted in reduced workers comp expenditures.
The Workers Compensation Research Institute
Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Workers Compensation Research Institute began as part of an ongoing research project on workers from all over the country. The project in question aims to explore the benefits of physical medicine for treating musculoskeletal issues as opposed to opioids.
The long-term project also investigated chiropractic care access to injured workers. Data from 28 states were gathered for the study, revealing that access to chiropractic care and the prevalence of treatment varied significantly from state to state.
Other results of the study were equally significant. Data concluded that 5% to 34% of claims associated with lower back pain involving chiropractic care occurred 18 months after an injury,
California, Minnesota, New York, and Wisconsin have the highest number of lower back pain claims. All of these states allowed injured employees to select the medical provider of their choice.
States that had the lowest number of lower back pain claims were Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These states do not allow employees to select their medical care providers and are instead assigned providers by their employers.
What These Findings Mean
These findings seem to suggest a few things. For one, lower back pain claims in which chiropractic care occurs exclusively generally entailed lower costs. Secondly, injured workers that received chiropractic care exclusively experienced shorter periods of temporary disability.
Considering the benefits of chiropractic care to injured workers, one might wonder why more states don’t allow employees to choose their own providers. Part of the reasons may be the belief that giving workers this opportunity could result in higher compensation and healthcare costs.
But the same Workers’ Compensation Research Institute study reveals otherwise. As the data strongly suggests, injured workers who primarily received care from chiropractors returned to work much sooner than others who received other forms of treatment. Furthermore, the overall cost of treatment was much lower.
Regardless of these findings, there is an apparent discrepancy concerning chiropractor involvement in treating injured employees. And the most significant determining factor seems to be who controls the medical provider selection.
In states where insurers or employers select employees’ medical providers, chiropractors aren’t frequently involved in low back pain compensation claims. On the other hand, in states where employees are permitted to choose their medical care providers, chiros have more involvement in their treatment.
The study analyzed data from over two million claims. Patients treated solely by chiropractors saved approximately 61% in treatment. Furthermore, their claims cost $3,000 less to indemnify. These results should be significant to policymakers and stakeholders involved in evaluating chiropractors’ roles in injury treatment.
About InsureMyWorkComp
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