Cumulative trauma claims represent a growing share of California workers compensation indemnity claims, with post-termination filings and litigation pushing up system costs, according to a report released Wednesday by the Workers\u2019 Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California.<\/p>\n
The WCIRB found that the share of indemnity claims involving cumulative trauma was relatively stable before the pandemic but has risen sharply since then, reaching a high in 2024 of 26% of indemnity claims, up from 13% in 2012.<\/p>\n
Cumulative trauma claims stem from repetitive physical or mental trauma over time, rather than a single incident. The report said the growth in California contrasts with the rest of the country, where cumulative trauma claim rates have remained stable since 2013.<\/p>\n
The WCIRB said the increase has occurred across all industry groups and regions, though cumulative trauma claims remain more common in Southern California, particularly around Los Angeles and San Diego.<\/p>\n
The report found that post-termination filings have become a major factor. A WCIRB survey of accident years 2022 through 2024 found that 58% of cumulative trauma claims were filed after employment ended, up from 44% in a prior survey of accident years 2013 through 2015. Nearly all post-termination cumulative trauma claims were litigated, and the majority of cumulative trauma claims overall were litigated.<\/p>\n
Cumulative trauma claims also are more likely than non-cumulative trauma claims to involve medical-legal and interpreter services early in the life of the claim, the WCIRB said. For accident years 2022 through 2024, medical-legal services accounted for 37% of paid medical services on cumulative trauma claims at 24 months, compared with 8% for non-cumulative trauma claims.<\/p>\n
Those trends are contributing to higher medical-legal, interpreter and allocated loss adjustment expense costs, the report said. Average paid ALAE remains higher for cumulative trauma claims than for non-cumulative trauma claims, and litigation was the strongest driver of ALAE costs for cumulative trauma claims.<\/p>\n
Despite cost pressures, the report said that growth in cumulative trauma claims has dampened overall severity trends in indemnity and medical costs, as average increases in indemnity and medical costs have been lower for cumulative trauma claims than for non-cumulative trauma claims since 2021.<\/p>\n
Total pure premium costs associated with cumulative trauma claims have more than doubled since 2020, while non-cumulative trauma claim costs have increased more than 30%, the WCIRB said. Cumulative trauma claims now account for roughly one-quarter of total pure premium costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cumulative trauma claims represent a growing share of California workers compensation indemnity claims, with post-termination filings and litigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-356329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}