NCCI Says 2 % of COVID-19 Work Comp Claims May Result in Permanent Disability
By Jim Sams If COVID-19 behaves like other workers ’ compensation
lung and disease claims , about two out of 100 cases may result in some degree of permanent partial disability and one out of 2,000 may result in permanent total disability , according to a new report by the National Council on Compensation Insurance .
Jeff Eddinger , NCCI ’ s senior division executive for regulatory business management , said Thursday that ’ s not enough to be a major cost driver , but does represent a real risk that insurers should keep in mind when assessing the potential impact of the pandemic on losses .
“ The vast majority of COVID claims are small-dollar claims ,” Eddinger said in a telephone interview . “ There is a small percentage that will result in permanent disability claims .”
NCCI has included the potential for permanent disability into its Hypothetical Scenarios Tool , a calculator released in May that models COVID-19 costs under various scenarios . The calculator allows users to adjust assumptions , such as the percentage of workers who are infected , the percentage hospitalized and now the percentage who are permanently disabled .
Adjusting the calculator to assume no permanent disability claims results in projected COVID-19 costs of $ 25.1 billion for the 38 states that use NCCI services . But the total cost increases by $ 4 billion when using the new default settings for permanent disability provided by NCCI .
For those defaults , NCCI assumes that 3 % of workers with severe cases of COVID-19 will receive permanent total disability benefits and 40 % will receive permanent partial disability benefits . For moderate infections , NCCI assumes 20 % will receive permanent partial disability benefits .
NCCI assumes that 90 % of workers who file COVID claims will suffer only mild cases . Those will result in a “ negligible rate ” of permanent disability .
NCCI said in a previous study that it assumes 8.5 % of workers who file claims will require hospitalization for moderate symptoms and 1.5 % will develop severe cases that require critical care .
The bottom line : There is a 2.3 % chance that a reported COVID-19 claim will result in permanent partial injury and there ’ s a 0.05 % chance that a COVID claim will result in a
8 DITCHMEN • OCTOBER 2020