Articles from California Workers' Compensation Institute

The NSAID meloxicam has emerged as the largest source of anti-inflammatory drug spending in California workers’ compensation, with its share of spending within its drug group rising from 1.7% in 2020 to 30.8% in 2025, according to the California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI).

COVID-19 temporarily disrupted California workers’ comp loss trends but did not stop the steady growth in medical and indemnity claim costs, and a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI) study indicates that medical costs may be accelerating in the post-pandemic era.

The share of California’s workers’ compensation claims identified as cumulative traumas (CT) nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025, with the sharpest growth occurring after 2021, according to a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI) study. The study found that the increase was widespread, extending beyond regions and industries that historically accounted for the largest share of CT claims, but traditional factors such as population and employment growth, overall claim volume and changes in worker tenure explain relatively little of the increase, raising questions about what is driving the continued growth of CT claims.

The decline in opioid use in California workers’ compensation has outpaced the decline among the state’s overall population according to a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI) analysis of 2017-2023 opioid prescription data from the California Department of Justice’s Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (CURES) database.