Oppose Proposed Workers' Comp Reform Bill

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 | 0

We previously opposed Senate Bill 923 because it would shove the Medicare Resource Based Relative Value Scale down the throats of injured workers and their treating doctors. The idea of this bill was to replace the low pay Official Medical Fee Schedule (OMFS) with the still lower paying Medicare RBRVS.  The upshot would be loss of access to specialty care.  It would foist on primary treating physicians a level of care requirement beyond their training.

We now find that the provisions of SB 923 are hidden within 279 pages of proposed legislative language. When 279 pages of a legislative proposal are sprung at the end of session we suspect that somebody is getting ambushed. In this case it's the injured workers and their access to specialty care.

We have supported Assembly Bill 1687 which would open up the utilization review process (UR) a little and give injured workers a chance. The proposed workers' comp reform measure wipes that opportunity out because it proposes an independent medical review (IMR) process that will protect the worst aspects of the current UR process, namely, the allowed process of letting doctors who don't interview or examine specific injured workers to overrule the decisions of the doctors who have interviewed and examined them.

The 279 pages referenced above arrogantly protect this unfair system by establishing an IMR process that will be even harder to appeal against than the current already obtuse UR system.

One is obliged to ask how a system that alleges it'll put an additional $700 million into permanent disability could be bad for injured workers. The answer lies in the claim that it'll also reduce costs by $1.4 billion. We are not told who will get the left over $700 million. We are not told that management groups of non-physicians who charge groups of treating doctors for administrative services will be allowed to raise their management fees. While they may pay the primary treating physicians a little more, they're not obliged to do so.

Here's what else the 279 pages tell us, well, some of it, anyway:

The proposed workers' comp reform measure currently plans to impose $150 mandatory filing fees for liens. Once the doctors are then short-changed and obliged to file fees for liens anyway, they'll reconsider if they should stay in the system.

The proposed workers' comp reform language  currently plans to impose a copy service fee that will further slow down injured workers' ability to prove their workers' comp cases.

The proposed workers' comp reform measure will curtail some of the features currently allowed by the otherwise already restrictive American Medical Association Guides to Permanent Impairment currently used to establish reimbursable impairments re activities of daily living (ADLs).

Sadly, the newly proposed workers' comp reform measure  has earned the right to be disgraced before it is defeated. It also exposes how the gut-and-amend process may be abused and misused.

<i>Dr. Robert L. Weinmann is a practicing neurologist in San Jose, Calif. This column was reprinted with his permission from his Politics of Healthcare blog.</i>