Workers' Comp Rates for Hospital - Professional Employees (Class Code 8833)

What's Included Under Class Code 8833

8833 contemplates the professional, patient-care side of a hospital's operation. NYCIRB's Classification Digest and NCCI's scope describe it as the professional employees of a hospital, which in practice means staff physicians and surgeons, residents and interns, registered and licensed practical nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, physical and occupational and respiratory therapists, pharmacists, and the licensed laboratory, imaging, and surgical technologists who support clinical treatment. These are the employees whose work is the delivery of medical care, as distinct from the housekeeping, dietary, and maintenance staff who keep the building running.

The code follows the hospital across general and specialty settings — a general acute-care hospital, a psychiatric or rehabilitation hospital, a hospital specializing in a particular infirmity, and the asylum/sanitarium operations NCCI folds into the same scope. Clerical office employees who work exclusively in a physically separated office can still be split to clerical office employees 8810 under the standard-exception rule, and a hospital-operated ambulance service may rate to ambulance service 8836 depending on the state.

8833 vs 9040 vs 8832: Drawing the Hospital Boundary

The single most important split is professional versus non-professional within the same hospital. Licensed clinical staff are 8833; the housekeeping, dietary, laundry, central-supply, maintenance, patient-transport, and orderly staff are hospital all other employees 9040. Because 9040 is the residual hospital code and is rated higher, sweeping support payroll into 8833 understates premium while folding clinical staff into 9040 overstates it — either way the audit will reclassify, so a hospital reports both codes and keeps payroll records by department.

The second boundary is hospital versus independent practice. 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, not 8833. A physician's office located inside a hospital can still be 8832 when the employees are employed by the practice group rather than the hospital; the physical location alone does not convert the practice's payroll into a hospital code. Inpatient or facility-based care is what pulls payroll into the 8833/9040 family.

The third boundary is the long-term-care and home-care edge. A freestanding nursing home not operated by a hospital is its own exposure, and care that moves into the patient's home is home health care 8835. When a hospital runs a convalescent or nursing operation at the same or an adjacent location, the support side of that operation is contemplated by 9040 rather than a standalone code — but the professional clinical staff of the hospital itself remain in 8833.

8833 Rate Spread by State

Class code 8833 is a relatively low-to-moderate cost classification because professional clinical exposure carries less manual-handling loss cost than hospital support work. The current table's cheapest five jurisdictions are Indiana ($2.22), Texas ($2.34), Virginia ($2.37), Utah ($2.42), and Arkansas ($2.51) per $100 of payroll; the most expensive five are New York ($4.13), Alaska ($4.05), California ($3.85), New Jersey ($3.71), and a tie between Hawaii and Pennsylvania ($3.65). Kentucky sits at the national reference midpoint at $2.85. Those are filing-based benchmarks, not carrier quotes, and they only become meaningful once the employer confirms the payroll actually belongs in 8833 or the state's local equivalent.

Because 8833 sits alongside lower-rated standard-exception companions, the cleanest rating step is splitting out the payroll that does not belong to clinical treatment. Clerical office employees belong in 8810, outside collectors and salespersons in 8742, and drivers in 7380 — each rated below the hospital codes. Keeping those groups out of the 8833 payroll, and keeping non-professional support staff in 9040, is what makes the department split defensible at audit.

Key Exclusions and State Mappings

Outpatient and non-hospital care is the biggest exclusion. A standalone physician practice, urgent-care clinic, or outpatient surgical office that is not operated by a hospital is generally physician & clerical 8832; home visits are home health care 8835; and a nursing home not run by a hospital is 8829. 8833 is specifically the professional payroll of a hospital, asylum, or sanitarium operation.

Independent-bureau states matter here. 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 professional staff differently from NCCI's 8833 — California, for example, uses its own hospital classifications rather than the national code. A hospital in those states should confirm the professional-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.