Florida Workers Comp Costs Up 5%: What It Means for Your Experience Mod

Florida's workers' comp rates dropped 6.9% for 2026. That's the ninth straight year of decreases (Florida OIR, November 2025). So why should a Florida contractor worry about costs?

Because the numbers underneath are moving the other direction. Your experience modification rate (EMR, also called "the mod") doesn't track filed rates. It tracks your losses. And Florida workers' comp costs per claim just jumped.

WCRI (the Workers Compensation Research Institute) released its CompScope Benchmarks for Florida, 21st Edition in May 2026. Total costs per claim grew 5% in 2025, reversing several years of flat or declining medical costs (WCRI CompScope, May 2026). Medical payments per claim grew 4%. Indemnity benefits grew 4%. Average weekly wages climbed nearly 4%, pushing indemnity values higher on their own.

Those numbers arrive on top of a fee schedule overhaul. Florida Senate Bill 362 raised non-surgical physician reimbursement from 110% to 175% of Medicare and surgical rates from 140% to 210%, effective January 1, 2025 (SB 362, June 2024). NCCI (the National Council on Compensation Insurance) estimated the change would add 7.3% to overall system costs, roughly $286 million. That estimate isn't theoretical anymore. It's in the claims data.

How Florida Workers Comp Costs Flow Into Your Experience Mod

Your mod doesn't care what the filed rate is. It cares about your actual losses versus expected losses. When systemwide costs rise, two things happen inside the NCCI experience rating formula.

First, actual incurred losses get larger. A lost-time claim that ran $18,000 in medical two years ago now runs closer to $22,000. Every dollar of actual incurred flows onto your worksheet.

Second, expected losses adjust, but with a lag. Expected loss rates are updated based on prior-year data. When costs jump as sharply as they did in Florida, actual losses run ahead of expected losses until the formula catches up. During that gap, your mod runs hotter than it should.

The split point matters here. NCCI moved to state-specific split points in November 2023, replacing the old uniform $18,500 threshold. The split point determines how much of each claim counts as primary (fully charged against your mod) versus excess (partially charged). When claim costs rise, more dollars land above the split point. That limits the damage on large claims. But primary losses still carry full weight, and for smaller contractors, even the excess portion has real impact on the calculation.

The Fee Schedule Jump Is Already Showing Up

Florida's physician reimbursement increase wasn't gradual. Non-surgical rates jumped from 110% of Medicare to 175% in a single day (SB 362, January 2025). WCRI noted that Florida's fee schedule moved from "among the lowest nationwide to being typical of states" in one year (WCRI CompScope, May 2026).

For a contractor with $500,000 in Florida payroll and a 0.90 mod, the effect is concrete. One additional lost-time claim under the new fee schedule comes in at a higher medical cost basis than anything in your current three-year experience window. That claim sits on your worksheet for three full rating periods. If total incurred pushes past the split point, the primary portion still hits dollar for dollar. We typically see one mid-severity claim at the new cost levels move a mod in this payroll range 6 to 10 points.

That's the difference between a 0.90 and a 1.00. Between a credit mod and unity. Between the carrier you want quoting your renewal and the one who quietly declines.

Two Partial Offsets, Neither Enough

Florida did get one favorable development. In February 2026, the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that physicians can no longer dispense medications directly to workers' comp patients, finding they don't qualify under Florida Statute Section 440.13(3)(d) (1st DCA, February 2026). The Florida Insurance Council projects $43 million in systemwide savings over five years. On a $3.2 billion premium market, that works out to roughly $0.27 per $100 of premium annually. Real savings at the macro level, but thin when stacked against a 5% cost increase.

The second offset is falling claim frequency. Lost-time frequency dropped 2% in 2025 (NCCI, 2026). Frequency gains have driven nine straight years of rate cuts in Florida. But severity is now outpacing frequency. When the average cost per claim rises faster than the count of claims falls, total system costs climb. That's the story the WCRI data tells, and it's the one your mod will reflect.

The 41% Attorney Factor

One number in the WCRI release deserves more attention than it gets. Claimants' attorneys were involved in 41% of Florida workers' comp claims, against a 31% median across all WCRI study states (WCRI CompScope, May 2026). Defense attorney fees topped $7,600 per claim.

Attorney involvement doesn't enter the mod formula directly. It enters your loss run. Litigated claims stay open longer, settle for more, and carry higher reserves while they're active. Each of those effects inflates actual incurred on your worksheet. In our reviews of Florida contractor worksheets, the claims that move the mod most aren't always the largest at inception. They're the ones that stay open.

A 41% attorney involvement rate in a rising-cost environment is a compounding problem. Claims that might have closed at $15,000 two years ago now carry $22,000 in medical exposure and a longer legal tail. That combination produces the kind of reserve values that sit on your worksheet long after the injury itself is resolved.

What an Audit Would Check

An audit examines whether claim values on your NCCI worksheet reflect the current fee schedule environment or carry reserves still calibrated to pre-SB 362 cost levels. It checks whether open claims have been re-valued since January 2025 and whether classification assignments align with the actual work performed. Florida's rising costs hit some class codes harder than others based on the mix of medical versus indemnity exposure. Most contractors we review have at least one claim where the worksheet value hasn't caught up with the current cost environment.

If you're a Florida contractor heading into a 2027 mod calculation with rising claim costs in your experience window, send us your NCCI worksheet. We'll show you where the exposure sits before your carrier does.