Workers' Compensation

The state’s workers’ comp system is less competitive now than before the 2007 reform legislation, due to a near doubling of maximum weekly benefits and slow and ineffective implementation of reforms intended to improve the program and reduce costs.New York needs to:

• Modify its scheduled loss of use awards to reflect current medical knowledge and practices
  
  
• Repeal the aggregate trust fund mandate for permanent partial disability (PPD) claims against commercial carriers
  
  
• Conduct a thorough review of Board processes (including, but not limited to, those adopted as part of the 2007 reforms) to identify whether they have created additional frictional costs, or in fact have streamlined processes to allow for better efficiencies within the system
  
  
• Provide a clear path to classification of PPDs, assure reasonable methods to classify PPD claimants, and ensure administrative processes for classification bringsNew York State closer to the national average of maximum medical improvement (about 19 months) from current levels of approximately 48 months