The Impact Of Affordable Care Act On Workers’ Comp

An important cost-control mechanism of the Affordable Care Act could end up annually shifting hundreds of millions of claim dollars into the workers compensation system, preliminary research by the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) indicates. The mechanism is the Accountable Care Organization (ACO), and WCRI researchers used the ACO’s similarity to Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) to estimate the nature of the cost shift as well as give a general idea of its magnitude.