'Duplicate Record Dilemma' Could Drive Up Med-Legal Costs, DWC Attorney Says

If California workers’ comp stakeholders don’t do their part in rooting out irrelevant or duplicate documents from record reviews, it will increase med-legal costs in the shadow of a new Medical-Legal Fee Schedule, an attorney for the Division of Workers’ Compensation said Tuesday. “That’s the duplicate record dilemma that’s not included in this fee schedule,” DWC attorney Winslow West said during the division’s second MLFS question-and-answer session. “We tried to insert a meet-and-confer requirement with respect to the records that are b...