NCCI's Illinois Insurance Market Presentation

On Wednesday, November 30, the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) will present its findings concerning the state of both the Illinois and national workers' compensation insurance markets to the IWCC's Medical Fee Advisory Board.

In response to the passage of HB 1698/Public Act 097-0018, NCCI filed, and the Illinois Department of Insurance approved, an 8.8% decrease in the voluntary advisory insurance rates effective 9/1/11.  However, in September, NCCI requested a 3.5% increase for the 2012 rates. This Business Insurance article from October provides a general overview of the two rate changes.

The NCCI presentation is scheduled for 9:00am in Room 9-040 of the James R. Thompson Center.

IWCC Updated Workplace Notice and SSNs

A couple of short updates about the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission.

The IWCC posted a new employer workplace notice, which incorporates the PPP into the notification language. The workplace notice now includes the following:

If the employer notifies you that it has an approved Preferred Provider Program for workers’ compensation, the PPP counts as one of your two choices of providers.

The IWCC also announced through its website that it will no longer accept Social Security numbers.

Effective immediately, in response to the Illinois Supreme Court Order M.R. 138, the Commission will no longer collect Social Security numbers. The Social Security field has been eliminated from the application and settlement contract forms. Do not enter the number on existing forms. Please update your electronic forms.  

We will request the SSN in those limited circumstances where the information is necessary, and only then at such time as necessary, e.g., to process payment from the Rate Adjustment Fund or Injured Workers Benefit Fund.  

We will remove the numbers from existing files upon request.

Next IWCC Medical Fee Advisory Board Meetings

The IWCC Medical Fee Advisory Board has two scheduled meetings in the coming weeks.

On Wednesday, November 30, the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) will provide the Board with a presentation concerning the state of both the Illinois and national workers' compensation insurance markets.  The meeting is scheduled for 9:00am in Room 9-040 of the James R. Thompson Center.

The Board will then meet one week later for its regularly scheduled meeting at 2:00pm on Wednesday, December 7. The IWCC website does not have the meeting agenda posted at this time, but this will be the last scheduled Board meeting before the implementation of the new IWCC fee schedule regions on 1/1/2012. 

1/1/2012 Fee Schedule Region Maps & Update

As covered in previous posts, there are major changes to the IWCC's fee schedule regions coming January 1, 2012. The regions, and the providers' fee schedule amounts, will change in less than 2 months.

While the Medical Fee Advisory Board initially voted to use a weighted average to collapse the geozip regions, Chairman Mitch Weisz announced at the October 18 meeting that the IWCC will utilize a straight average, without weighting, to collapse the current geozip fee schedule amounts into the four Non Hospital and fourteen Hospital regions.  Our September 20 Board Meeting update included two examples of the the geozip collapse utilizing both a weighted average and a straight average methodology. 

The current IWCC fee schedule lookup utilizes the 3 digit geozip; however, the new regions are defined by county, not geozip.  Per our latest conversations with the IWCC, the new medical fee region lookup and rates will not appear on the IWCC website until the end of the year. 

Maps of the new IWCC fee schedule regions

4 Regions: Non Hospital Fee Schedule Amounts

1. Cook County
2. DuPage, Kane, Lake, & Will Counties
3. Bond, Calhoun, Clinton, Jersey, Macoupin, Madison, Monroe, Montgomery, Randolph, St. Clair, & Washington Counties
4. All other counties in the state

14 Regions: Hospital Fee Schedule Amounts

1. Cook, DuPage, Will, Kane, McHenry, DeKalb, Kendall, & Grundy Counties
2. Kankakee County
3. Madison, St. Clair, Macoupin, Clinton, Monroe, Jersey, Bond, & Calhoun Counties
4. Winnebago & Boone Counties
5. Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Marshall, & Stark Counties
6. Champaign, Piatt, & Ford Counties
7. Rock Island, Henry, & Mercer Counties
8. Sangamon & Menard Counties
9. McLean County
10. Lake County
11. Macon County
12. Vermilion County
13. Alexander County
14. All other counties in the state

IWCC Arbitrator Reassignment Follow-up

The IWCC posted a follow-up to its arbitrator reassignments. For all questions regarding arbitrators or arbitration, the IWCC’s contact is Bertha Parker. 

Currently, there are three types of arbitrator reassignments:

• Immediate reassignments
• One of HB 1698's initial changes was the termination of the IWCC arbitrators on July 1, 2011; however, they continued to serve pending either reappointment or replacement.
• When Governor Quinn announced his arbitrator appointments in October, John Dibble, Gilberto Galicia, James Giordano, Kathleen Hagan, Robert Lammie, Andrew Nalefski, Richard Peterson and Joseph Prieto were not reappointed, and Charles DeVriendt was instead appointed to the Commission.
• In addition to the initial changes, 2 reappointed arbitrators have recently changed positions, with Ruth White's appointment to the Commission and Jeffrey Tobin's appointment to the Seventh Judicial Circuit.
• The immediate reassignments and call coverage are due to the former arbitrators who were not reappointed.  The IWCC distributed the cases that were tried, but not yet decided, to the current arbitrators to render decisions.
• Temporary assignments
• Arbitrators Jutila (Chicago) and Neal (Collinsville) are out on medical leave, so the IWCC is assigning arbitrators to cover these calls.
• January 1, 2012 reassignments
• Effective January 1, 2012, the current 24 arbitrator territories reduce to 17 territories, and a combination of three arbitrators will rotate through each territory.  According to the IWCC's announcement:

For the rest of 2011, the current arbitrator assignments are still in place. These reassignments should not impair parties' ability to move their cases in November and December 2011. There is no need to cancel scheduled trials.

IWCC Arbitrator & Commissioners Update

The Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission issued several updates regarding its arbitrators and commissioners in the last week.  Here is a summary of the announcements:

On 11/7/11, Governor Quinn announced Nancy Lindsay's appointment as an IWCC arbitrator and Ruth White's appointment as an IWCC commissioner.

Nancy Lindsay served as a commissioner since 2006 and was most recently the employer representative on Panel B. As an arbitrator, her hearing sites will be Springfield and Quincy.

Ruth White served as an arbitrator for over 30 years, and she was recently reappointed by Governor Quinn to a one year term.  She will now serve as the employer representative commissioner on Panel B.

Arbitrator Jeffrey E. Tobin was recently appointed to the Seventh Judicial Circuit for the Jacksonville area, and he will no longer hear workers' compensation cases. He served as an IWCC arbitrator since 2004, and he was recently reappointed by Governor Quinn to a two year term.  

The IWCC posted the 2011 coverage schedules for the former arbitrators' calls, and the 2012 arbitrators' schedules are also available at this time.