A bill to reform the $120 Million Return to Work Fund is dead for this year. The bill, AB 553 (carried by Tom Daly of Anaheim), will become a “two year bill”, meaning it may resurface next year. This week’s scheduled Senate Appropriations hearing on the bill was canceled. The bill was designed to address the
The WCIRB has now issued its 2017 report on the state of the California workers’ comp system (the report can be found at the bottom of this post). If you’re headed to a desert island and want to take along one resource for understanding California workers’ comp now, this is probably the best choice. As
In late June the WCAB issued a clarifying decision in Frances Stevens V. Outspoken Enterprises (State Compensation Insurance Fund) (link at end of this post). The decision reaffirms the WCAB’s determination that a former home health care guideline, the 2009 MTUS guideline on home health care, is void ab initio. SCIF filed a writ petition on 8/1/17:
About a year and a half ago I toured the Tesla factory in Fremont. What an eye opener. Our office has represented auto workers at that plant for decades. That means going back to the old General Motors operation there. After that, we handled workers at New United Motor (NUMMI), the joint venture between GM and
What will the California workers’ comp drug formulary look like? We didn’t get an answer by July 1, 2017, the date mandated by AB 1124, passed in 2015. But the DWC is making strides in putting the formulary in place. Stakeholders with an interest in this will probably want to pay close attention, as the