WC Commissioner Issues Mandatory COVID-19 Data Call
On June 2, 2020, the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation issued a mandatory data call for certain information related to COVID-19 injuries reported to selected insurance carriers on or after December 1, 2019. The action, which was announced in Commissioner’s Bulletin No. B-0029-20 follows the agency’s request for public comment from system stakeholders to help shape the parameters of the data call.
The Workers’ Compensation Research and Evaluation Group will compile the results on behalf of DWC. The data call is designed to provide DWC with immediate access to information necessary to determine the impact of COVID-19 injuries on the Texas workers’ compensation system. The Division plans three separate data call submissions.
COVID-19 Data Call Submission Deadlines
| What to Submit | Deadline For Submission to DWC |
| COVID-19 exposures and injuries reported to the insurance carrier from December 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020, and payments made on those injuries as of June 30, 2020. | August 17, 2020 |
| COVID-19 exposures and injuries reported to the insurance carrier from December 1, 2019, through September 30, 2020, and payments made on those injuries as of September 30, 2020. | October 30, 2020 |
| COVID-19 exposures and injuries reported to the insurance carrier from December 1, 2019, through December 31, 2020, and payments made on those injuries as of December 31, 2020. | January 29, 2021 |
The Division has directed all selected insurance carriers and insurance carrier groups to provide summary data using the COVID-19 data call reporting forms and instructions. Each selected insurance carrier or group is required to provide one data submission per insurance carrier or group.
Insurance carriers and groups must submit the requested data to DWC through the insurance carrier Austin representative’s Secure File Transfer Protocol box no later than 5 p.m., Central time on August 17, 2020. If FO&L serves as your Austin Representative, please coordinate your planned data submission with our office through Heather Terrones at hta@fol.com.
Carriers’ first data call submission should include all COVID-19 exposures and injuries reported and payments made on these injuries through June 30, 2020. Subsequent data call submissions will be cumulative data submissiosn.
Insurance carriers should maintain injury level data for the injuries reported in this data call and may be asked to submit that data to DWC in the future.
The Division has published a list of 66 carriers that it indicates will be participants in the data call. These carriers include four state workers’ compensation systems, 17 Texas cities who self-insure, 12 self-insured Texas counties, 6 Texas hospital districts who self-insure, 6 intergovernmental risk pools, 2 certified self-insured employers, and 19 commercial insurance carriers or carrier groups.
We continue to hear concerns voice by Division staff that they are not seeing the reporting of as many COVID-19 claims as has been anticipated. We remind you that DWC issued the following coding guidance in a memo March 27, 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 data call, please contact Bobby Stokes or James Sheffield.
FOLIO
