The number of California workers’ compensation inpatient hospital stays fell 1.9 percent between 2017 and 2018, for a net decline of nearly 31 percent since 2010, a new study shows.

A study from the California Workers’ Compensation Institute traces much of that drop to a declining number of hospitalizations related to musculoskeletal disorders, including spinal fusions.

The Workers’ Compensation Bureau of California on Monday its latest quarterly report on insurer experience as of June 30.

The WCIRB report shows written premium for 2018 is 4% below that for 2017 and 6% below that for 2016.

Medical payments in California’s workers’ compensation system continued to decline in 2018 as the medical payments per claim decreased, according to a report from the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California.

The WCIRB released its California Workers’ Compensation Aggregate Medical Payment Trends report comparing medical payment information from 2016 to 2018.

The board of California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund announced plans to distribute a $105 million dividend to qualifying policyholders with policies that took effect between Jan. 1 and Aug. 19.

This dividend equals roughly 15% of the estimated annual premium reported in State Fund’s mid-year 2019 financial statement and averages out to roughly $1,400 per employer.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, or NSAIDs, have supplanted opioids as the most common therapeutic drug group prescribed to injured workers in California, according to a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute study.

The study also finds that payment data show that both dermatological medications and anticonvulsants now rank ahead of opioids in terms of total reimbursements.

Worker’s compensation rates in California have been going down a while, and that has had an impact on written premium, a report released on Wednesday shows.

The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California’s report looks at on insurer loss and premium experience valued as of March 31, 2018.

The California Supreme Court issued an opinion today that utilization review physicians cannot be sued for malpractice, upholding established law that the workers’ comp system provides injured employees an exclusive remedy against an employer for compensable work-related injuries.

The court considered the application of workers’ comp exclusivity to claims arising from the utilization review process. Utilization reviewers act on behalf of employers and determine whether the treatment plan recommended for an employee’s injury is medically necessary after consulting a schedule of uniform treatment guidelines.

A study from the California Workers’ Compensation Institute shows the likelihood that indemnity was paid on a workers’ comp claim increased with the number of concurrent prescriptions the injured worker was on.

Concurrent use of multiple medications to treat one or multiple medical conditions has become prevalent, with up to 10 percent of the U.S. population and up to 30 percent of older adults taking five or more drugs simultaneously, according to the CWCI study.

California’s workers’ compensation system has undergone numerous changes since the implementation of the sweeping reforms that started in 2013 with Senate Bill 863.

In the last few years medical provider fraud has been addressed by subsequent new laws, a plague of liens that burdened the system are being addressed, and there’s even a new drug formulary.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has issued an order directing every insurer licensed to write workers’ compensation insurance in the state must report their federal income tax savings annually through a rate filing in light of the new tax law.

The recent revision to the Federal Tax Schedule for 2018 reduced the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. That means that nationally insurers will now be able to retain even more of policyholder premiums as profit.