The Effects of Provider Choice Policies on Workers' Compensation Costs

David Neumark and Bogdan Savych

No 23611, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine the effects of provider choice policies on workers’ compensation medical and indemnity costs. We find no difference in average medical costs between states where policies give employers control over the choice of provider and states where policies instead give workers the most control. But a richer distributional analysis indicates that developed medical costs for the costliest cases are higher in states where policies give workers more control over provider choice. We find similar evidence for indemnity costs, although the point estimates also indicate (statistically insignificantly) higher average costs where policy gives workers the most control over provider choice. Overall, the evidence suggests little relationship between provider choice policies and average medical or indemnity costs, but a higher incidence of high-cost cases when policies give workers more control of the choice of provider.

JEL-codes: H7 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
Note: EH LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as David Neumark & Bogdan Savych, 2018. "The Effects of Provider Choice Policies on Workers’ Compensation Costs," Health Services Research, vol 53(6), pages 5057-5077.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23611.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23611

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23611

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().