\n\t\t\t\tBy Joe Paduda\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tWednesday, June 24, 2026
\n\t\t\t\t| 0<\/p>\n
After\u00a0decades of being wildly underpaid\u00a0due to the\u00a0Sunshine State\u2019s abysmally low workers\u2019 comp fee schedule,\u00a02025 saw those worthies get a major jump in pay:\u00a041%, to be precise.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Joe Paduda<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a key takeaway from the Workers Compensation Research Institute’s\u00a0recent report<\/a> on nonfacility prices paid for workers\u2019 comp medical services.<\/p>\n But \u2014 and it’s a big but \u2014\u00a0Florida\u2019s docs are still paid below the median in the 36 states evaluated by WCRI.<\/p>\n A key point is that WCRI\u2019s report speaks to the prices paid, not the fee schedule itself. Network discounts are undoubtedly a key factor, as Florida\u2019s network penetration is just under 80% for medical services.<\/p>\n What\u2019s amazing is that providers\u00a0are finally being paid around the same as docs in other states. Amazing\u00a0because the entity that regulates fee schedules, the Three-Member Panel,\u00a0has a long history of screwing docs and rewarding hospitals.<\/p>\n Unfortunately,\u00a0two of the current members were, for years, no friends of the provider community.<\/p>\n What does this mean for you?<\/p>\n About friggin\u2019 time.<\/p>\n Joseph Paduda is the principal of Health Strategy Associates, a consulting firm focused on improving medical management programs in workers\u2019 compensation.\u00a0This column is republished with his permission from his\u00a0Managed Care Matters\u00a0blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Joe Paduda Wednesday, June 24, 2026 | 0 After\u00a0decades of being wildly underpaid\u00a0due to the\u00a0Sunshine State\u2019s abysmally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-317855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}