Hospital Rate Regulations, Fee Schedules, and Workers' Compensation Medical Payments

This article examines the effect of workers' compensation fee schedules and state hospital rate-setting upon workers' compensation payments. We examine four types of injuries and payments involving hospitalization and nonhospitalized claims. The sample contains about 217,000 randomly-selected workers' compensation lost workday claims from 17 states filed between 1979 and 1988. We find that workers' compensation fee schedules and state hospital rate-setting reduce medical payments per claim