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CWCI Scorecard Looks at Carpal Tunnel Claims in California WC

The California Workers' Compensation Institute has released the sixth edition of its "Injury Scorecard" research series, providing detailed data on accident year (AY) 2001 to 2011 workers' compensation claims experience for cases in which the primary diagnosis was carpal tunnel syndrome. The new Scorecard is based on data from 19,899 California open and closed job injury claims for carpal tunnel syndrome that through December 2011 resulted in total payments of $738 million. The Scorecard shows that over the 11-year span of the study, carpal tunnel claims accounted for less than 1% of California job injury claims, but 2.4% of all paid losses.

More than 60% of carpal tunnel claims come from the professional/clerical, manufacturing, and mercantile sectors, though since 2008, the highest growth rate of carpal tunnel claims has been among hospital workers, who accounted for nearly 14% of the claims since 2008, up from 6.3% in the prior five years. More than half of the carpal tunnel claims over the past decade have resulted in permanent disability (PD) - more than triple the rate for all job injury claims, and these PD cases account for nearly 89 cents out of every dollar paid on carpal tunnel claims. Since 2001, the average claim duration for carpal tunnel claims has been nearly 31 months from the claim filing date to claim closure - nearly triple the average of 10.8 months for all other work injury claims - and for carpal tunnel PD cases, the average duration has been nearly 4 years (1,406 days), or about 5 months longer than the average for PD cases involving other types of injuries. The Score Card notes a number of factors that may contribute to the longer claim durations in carpal tunnel cases including uncertainty and disputes over the cause and nature of the injury; notification and initial treatment delays; high levels of attorney involvement; the high incidence of lost time claims (especially PD claims), and treatment plans that often involve surgery followed by physical therapy and delayed return to work. As a result, average payments on carpal tunnel claims have consistently exceeded the average for all claims at 12, 24 and 36 months post injury. For example, for accident year 2007-2009 lost time claims, total benefit payments for carpal tunnel cases at 36 months post-injury averaged $35,129 ($16,980 medical + $18,149 indemnity); 20% more than the average of $29,211 ($15,646 medical + $13,565 indemnity) paid for all California workers' compensation lost time claims.

The Score Card also features a profile of injured workers with carpal tunnel syndrome, as well as claim distributions by industry sector, injured worker county of residence, and nature and cause of injury. In addition, several Score Card exhibits compare the results for carpal tunnel claims to those for all California workers' compensation claims (these include the exhibits showing the percentage of claims with PD payments within 3 years of injury; the attorney involvement data; the claim closure data; the prescription drug distributions; the breakdowns of medical development by Fee Schedule Section at 12 and 24 months post injury; the notice and treatment time lags; the medical network utilization rates; and the 12-, 24- and 36-month loss development).

CWCI Industry Score Cards and summary Bulletins are available to CWCI members and research subscribers on CWCI's web site, http://www.cwci.org/. Anyone wishing to subscribe may do so by going to CWCI's online Store. The next Score Card in the series will focus on "Other Injuries, Poisonings and Toxic Effects."