Summary
This report contains the evaluation of California’s 24-hour coverage pilot programs conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research with support from the California Division of Workers’ Compensation and the Workers’ Compensation Research Initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Our evaluation addressed two major research questions: (1) Did 24-hour coverage reduce medical claims costs?, and (2) Were employees enrolled in 24-hour coverage representative of the workforce in their firms, or were they systematically difference from employees who chose not to enroll? The remainder of this report is organized to address these two major research questions. Section 2 includes a detailed analysis of workers’ compensation claims covering the period from 1992 to 1997. This analysis compares claims from injured employees in the pilot firms who enrolled in 24-hour coverage with two comparison groups: (1) injured employees in the pilot firms not enrolled in 24-hour coverage, and (2) injured employees in a matching set of firms not participating in 24-hour coverage. Section 3 includes findings from a telephone survey of a random sample of employees in pilot firms who were interviewed regarding their reasons for electing to enroll or not to enroll in 24-hour coverage.