Workers' Comp Rates for Hospital - All Other Employees (Class Code 9040)

What's Included Under Class Code 9040

9040 contemplates the operating backbone of a hospital that is not professional clinical care. NYCIRB's Classification Digest describes the code as the non-professional hospital staff — janitors, maintenance workers, and cafeteria employees — and in practice that means housekeeping and environmental-services staff, dietary and food-service workers, laundry and linen staff, central-supply and sterile-processing employees, plant maintenance and engineering, security, patient-transport aides, orderlies, and other general support roles. These are the employees who do not deliver licensed medical treatment but whose work is inseparable from running the facility.

The classification covers general hospitals as well as hospitals that specialize in the treatment of specific infirmities, and it follows the hospital into an attached convalescent or nursing operation: when a hospital runs a convalescent or nursing home at the same or an adjacent location, the support employees of that home are contemplated by 9040 rather than a separate standalone long-term-care code. A freestanding nursing home not operated by a hospital, a home for the aged, or a home health care service is a different exposure with its own classification.

9040 Rate Spread by State

Class code 9040 is a mid-to-higher cost classification because the support exposure includes manual material handling, patient lifting, kitchen and laundry hazards, and around-the-clock building operation. The current table's cheapest five jurisdictions are Indiana ($4.29), Texas ($4.51), Virginia ($4.57), Utah ($4.68), and Arkansas ($4.84) per $100 of payroll; the most expensive five are New York ($7.98), Alaska ($7.81), California ($7.43), New Jersey ($7.15), and a tie between Hawaii and Pennsylvania ($7.04). Kentucky sits near the national midpoint at $5.50. Those are filing-based benchmarks, not carrier quotes, and they only become meaningful once the employer confirms the payroll actually belongs in 9040 or the state's local equivalent.

Because 9040 is the residual hospital code, the single most important rating step is splitting it cleanly from its lower-rated companions. Clerical office employees belong in 8810, outside collectors and salespersons in 8742, and drivers in 7380 — each rated well below 9040. Sweeping those employees into the 9040 payroll overstates premium, while folding heavier support payroll down into clerical understates it and invites an audit reclassification.

Key Exclusions and State Mappings

The biggest boundary is professional versus non-professional. Physicians, nurses, technicians, therapists, and other licensed clinical staff are hospital professional employees 8833, not 9040. An outpatient physician practice or clinic that is not part of a hospital — even one employing nurses and medical assistants — is generally physician & clerical 8832 instead, and the employer-of-record (hospital vs independent practice) usually controls which family applies.

Standard-exception groups carve out of 9040 even inside the hospital. Clerical office employees (8810), outside salespersons or collectors (8742), and drivers and their helpers (7380) each report under their own code rather than the hospital support code. An ambulance operation run by the hospital may belong under ambulance service 8836 depending on the state and how the service is organized.

Independent-bureau states matter here too. California (WCIRB), Pennsylvania (PCRB), Delaware (DCRB), New Jersey (NJCRIB), Michigan (CAOM), and North Carolina (NCRB) maintain their own classification systems and may number or split hospital support staff differently from NCCI's 9040 — California, for example, uses its own hospital classifications rather than the national code. A hospital in those states should confirm the support-staff classification with the state rating bureau rather than relying on the NCCI number, and should keep payroll records by department so the 8833 / 9040 / 8810 split is provable at audit.