The Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) released its 2026 Network Report Card, comparing network and non-network healthcare across cost and utilization, including overall costs for all claims, lost-time claims, and medical-only claims.

The results in this report card show a comparison between 22 networks with a total of 219,941 injured employees and non-network claims with a total 216,371 injured employees. All injuries occurred between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2025.

The report found that network claims generally had lower costs, faster access to care, higher satisfaction rates, and better return-to-work outcomes than non-network claims.

In September of 2026, Healthesystems submitted a comment letter requesting analysis of in-network versus out-of-network pharmacy utilization and its impact on costs and outcomes. The 2026 report did not address that specific recommendation, but it did add additional pharmacy utilization detail, including prescription day data. The pharmacy findings showed lower pharmacy costs and fewer prescription days among network claims.

Key pharmacy details include:

• Network pharmacy costs were lower than non-network costs across all claim types. Average pharmacy costs were $174 per network claim compared to $233 per non-network claim
• Lost-time pharmacy costs averaged $235 for network claims versus $322 for non-network claims
• Medical-only pharmacy costs averaged $127 for network claims versus $168 for non-network claims
• Network claims had slightly higher pharmacy utilization (25% vs. 23%), while the average number of prescriptions per injured employee was the same for both groups at 3.2 prescriptions
• Network claims averaged fewer prescription days per injured employee (48 days) than non-network claims (52 days)

Other high-level findings from the report include:

• Average health care costs per claim at six months post-injury were $2,941 for network claims and $3,297 for non-network claims
• Lost time claim costs averaged $7,409 for network claims compared to $8,901 for non-network claims.
• Satisfaction with care was 63% for network claims and 59% for non-network claims
• Satisfaction with treating physicians was also higher for network claims (67% vs. 63%).
• Access to care was 65% for network claims and 56% for non-network claims
• Network claims received first non-emergency treatment sooner, averaging 3.9 days compared to 5.1 days for non-network claims
• Return to work rate was 90% for network claims and 81% for non-network claims
• Network participants reported missing an average of 8 weeks of work due to injury, compared to 14 weeks for non-network participants.
• A higher percentage of network claims received professional and pharmacy services than non-network claims. A higher percentage of non-network claims received hospital services