DWC Requests Public Comments on Proposed COVID-19 Data Call
The Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation has announced that it plans to conduct a data call related to COVID-19 claims. The Division has solicited public comment from system stakeholders regarding the parameters of the data call. You can view the agency’s April 27, 2020 request for comments to its proposed draft data call here.
The draft data call has four sections which will need to be completed in response to the data call. DWC plans to post a bulletin in late May that will initiate the data call. DWC anticipates that the deadline for selected insurance carriers and insurance carrier groups to submit their initial summary data will be August 15, 2020. The initial submission will cover COVID-19 exposures and injuries reported to the insurance carriers as well as any income, death and/or medical benefit payments made on COVID-19 claims through June 30, 2020.
The proposed draft data call is posted on the Division’s website. Sections 3 and 4 of the draft described three data submission timeframes as well as the proposed COVID-19 data that will be requested. The formulation of the draft suggests that the Division plans to request additional data submissions after August 15, 2020 to cover claims reported or paid after June 30, 2020.
The Division has published a list of 60 carriers that it indicates will be participants in the data call. These carriers include four state workers’ compensation systems, 15 Texas cities who self-insure, 12 self-insured Texas counties, 5 Texas hospital districts who self-insure, 6 intergovernmental risk pools, and 18 commercial insurance carriers or carrier groups.
DWC will consider written comments to the proposed data call if they are received no later than 5 p.m., Central time, on May 8, 2020. You are encouraged to email your comments to RuleComments@tdi.texas.gov, or mail or deliver them to Cynthia Guillen, Legal Services, MS-4D, Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation, 7551 Metro Center Drive, Suite 100, Austin, Texas 78744-1645.
We have been told by DWC staff that they are not seeing the reporting of as many COVID-19 claims as has been anticipated. DWC issued the following coding guidance in a memo in late March 2020.
New claims reporting codes for COVID-19
DWC encourages workers’ compensation insurance carriers to begin using the new International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions codes for electronic data interchange (EDI) claims reports: “cause of injury” code 83 -Pandemic and “nature of injury” code 83 – COVID-19 on April, 2020.
The codes should be used for COVID-19 injuries occurring on or after December 1, 2019. DWC has updated its claims EDI collection systems to accept these new code values.
Insurance carriers should contact their trading partners to discuss reporting these new codes. For questions, contact Martha Luevano at 512-804-4858 or martha.luevano@tdi.texas.gov.
Please be sure that you are accurately coding COVID-19 claims. It will be very difficult for you to accurately respond to the data call without accurate coding.
We also recommend that you remind those persons within your organization who are responsible for injury coding of this obligation. If the coding has been omitted on claims reported on or after April 1, 2020, we recommend going back and amending your reporting to include the proper coding.
If you have any questions regarding this proposed data call, please contact Bobby Stokes or James Sheffield.
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