Delaware’s Workers’ Compensation Task Force – along with business and legislative leaders – made recommendations to Gov. Jack Markell and the General Assembly in an effort to deal with workers compensation rate increases that are viewed as a threat to the state’s economic recovery.
The task force was established by the General Assembly and Governor to address the 34% increase in insurance that covers injured workers. These rate increases have increased costs for Delaware businesses and made businesses less competitive in getting construction and other contract work.
Lieutenant Gov. Matt Denn, who worked with the General Assembly in 2006 and 2007 to enact workers compensation reforms that cut rates by over 40%, chaired weekly meetings to address the issue and come up with common-sense solutions. All meetings were open to the public, provided an opportunity for public comment, audio-recorded and posted on the Lieutenant Governor’s website, along with all documents presented at meetings.
The task force’s recommendations fall into four areas and some members disagreed with the findings. You can find out more in the following links posted below:
Supplement to Task , Force Report, Task force comments, State Chamber comment, Workers comp task force report final draft
Findings:
1. Place tighter controls on workers compensation medical costs. These recommendations include a two-year inflation freeze on the fee schedule for medical treatment of workers compensation recipients, a permanent reduction in the inflation rate allowed for hospital treatment of workers compensation recipients, and reductions in allowed reimbursements in a variety of medical categories.
2. Ensure that insurance carriers’ requests for rate increases receive a high level of scrutiny. These recommendations include the retention of a part-time attorney to represent businesses during the workers compensation rate-setting process, and a system to ensure that insurers are diligently enforcing the state’s medical cost controls.
3. Make the state’s laws encouraging injured workers to return to work more effective; and
4. Improve the state’s workplace safety program to both increase its usage and ensure that is accurately determines which workplaces are using appropriate safety practices.
The legislative resolution also gave the task force authority to direct the Delaware Compensation Rating Bureau, Inc. (DCRB) to submit factual information to the task force for consideration. The task force used this authority very aggressively, asking for and receiving hundreds of pages of narrative information and data from the DCRB which was helpful to the task force in reaching its decisions.
The task force is also recommending that the governor and General Assembly keep it in existence, both so that it can consider some issues that it did not have time to discuss during the short time that it had to make recommendations, and so that it can monitor the impact of its recommendations and suggest stricter measures with respect to medical costs if necessary.
