Texas drops participation in WCRI studies

The Texas Department of Insurance confirmed Friday it will no longer participate in Workers Compensation Research Institute studies that have for decades compared the state workers compensation system to that in at least 17 states nationwide.

A department spokeswoman wrote “DWC appreciates all the good work WCRI does on behalf of our industry” and that the “decision was made to ensure budgeted resources are expended on core agency functions.” She did not respond to follow-up questions over how much the department was paying WCRI.

Short of confirming that Texas data would no longer be in studies, a WCRI spokesman on Friday said the research organization “has valued its work with the Texas Department of Insurance” and hopes to collaborate in the future.

According to the latest state benchmark study released in October 2024, WCRI’s work “assists policymakers and stakeholders in Texas’s workers’ compensation system by identifying current cost drivers and emerging trends in payments, prices, and utilization of medical services among both nonhospital and hospital providers.”

The 2024 report compares medical payment metrics in Texas with those in 16 other states and analyzes changes from 2017 to 2022. In some instances, WCRI included data from before 2017 to provide historical context for key metrics and used findings from other WCRI studies to create “a more comprehensive overview of the system in Texas.”