Improvements Seen in Texas Workers’ Comp Health Care Networks

Workers’ compensation networks certified by the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) continued to show improvements in medical costs, return-to-work outcomes, and health outcomes in the latest annual report card published by TDI’s Workers’ Compensation Research and Evaluation Group (REG).

Networks produced better return-to-work and health outcomes compared to non-network claims for the 2013 report card, TDI announced.

Non-network claims continued to have lower average medical costs than network claims. However, cost reductions in networks and cost increases in non-network claims narrowed the difference in medical costs between network and non-network claims to 4 percent in 2013 compared with a 31 percent difference in 2010.

TDI’s 2013 report card is the seventh to be published since TDI certified the initial networks in early 2006.

The network report card is posted on the agency website at: www.tdi.texas.gov