BARNES, J.
Washington Township Fire Department (“Washington Township”) appeals a decision of the Worker’s Compensation Board (“the Board”) awarding to Beltway Surgery Center (“Beltway”) the full amount of Beltway’s medical bills for treatment to an employee of Washington Township. We affirm.
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The central issue in this case surrounding these statutes is, in the event a billing review service claims that a medical service provider’s bill has exceeded the 80th percentile standard and recommends payment of less than the billed amount, and the medical service provider decides to challenge that determination before the Board, who bears the burden of proof on whether the bill exceeds the 80th percentile standard-the medical service provider or the employer of the injured employee (or the employer’s insurance company)? The statutes themselves do not directly answer this question.
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We conclude that placing the burden of proof on the employer is more consistent with Indiana law generally and with the Act itself. The 80th percentile rule is a more precise codification of the general principle that medical bills sought to be recovered during litigation be reasonable and not be excessive. See Butler v. Indiana Dep’t of Ins., 904 N.E.2d 198, 202 (Ind. 2009). . . .
If anything, such a presumption should apply even more forcefully under the Act. Mathematically speaking, four out of five submitted medical bills (80%) should theoretically fall within the Act’s statutory limitation, with only one out of five (20%) exceeding that limit. Thus, excessive charges should be the exception to the rule. The employer should bear the burden of proving that exception. To conclude otherwise would effectively impose a presumption that medical service providers in worker’s compensation cases routinely overcharge; we will not indulge in such a presumption, particularly in the complete absence of proof to that effect, as is the case here.
As for the specific language of the Act, we first observe that in Indiana, the employer or the employer’s insurer chooses the treating physician; the employee does not. Young v. Marling, 900 N.E.2d 30, 36 (Ind. Ct. App. 2009), trans. not sought. This is for the protection of the employer’s interests, as it allows employers to direct injured employees away from providers who prescribe excessive services or treatments. See id. at 37 n.3. This right to choose a medical provider also would permit an employer to control costs by choosing providers who tend to charge less. It is logical to require employers and their insurers to prove, despite this ability to control costs by forcing an employee to visit a medical provider of their choice, that a provider’s bill still is excessive under the Act.
The single most important reason for requiring an employer to prove that a medical service provider’s charges have exceeded the 80th percentile is the Act’s precise statutory language governing the use of billing review services to calculate pecuniary liability. As recited above, Indiana Code Section 22-3-3-5.2(a) provides very specific guidelines for how a billing review service must go about determining pecuniary liability, i.e. whether a medical service provider’s bill falls at or below the 80th percentile of charges made by other providers in the community for similar procedures. The precise knowledge of how a billing review service reached a pecuniary liability determination, and whether it complied with Section 22-3-3-5.2(a) in making that determination, belongs exclusively to the billing review service. It is reasonable to expect an employer or its insurer, which hired the billing review service, to bear the burden of showing compliance with the statute. We further note that, unlike in Newport News, Washington Township concedes that the relevant statutes do not explicitly answer the question of who bears the burden of proof regarding pecuniary liability under the Act.
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The Board did not err in requiring Washington Township to prove how Mednet reached its determination of Washington Township’s pecuniary liability and to prove that Beltway’s billed charges exceeded the maximum amount permissible under the Act. We also conclude the Board did not err in awarding Beltway the full amount of its medical bills for May’s treatment, particularly in the absence of any evidence as to how Mednet purported to calculate Washington Township’s pecuniary liability. We affirm.
Affirmed.
BAKER, C.J., and MAY, J., concur.