Grinberg: Email Service of QME Reports Regs

Friday, March 11, 2022 | 0

Today I bring you an update regarding medical-legal evaluations. Proposed changes to Rule 36.7 would make electronic service of medical-legal reports permanent (rather than allowing for this as an emergency regulation). 

Gregory Grinberg

The regulation, as proposed, would allow any of the parties involved to agree to receive a qualified medical evaluation report via electronic service by providing an email address. It further refines the regulation to place the burden of providing an updated email address to the QME or agreed medical evaluator on the party. 

The regulation continues to require a proof of service and maintaining of records, just as before.

I, for one, am in favor of this approach. How many times have we been plagued by opposing counsel, trying to conceal lack of preparation and diligence by claiming that he or she never received a particular QME report? Now we will have concise proof (not the presumption of delivery that comes with a proof of service) that the report was timely served and delivered.

If you are at all like me, your own email inbox is overflowing (about two weeks ago I managed to get down to 17 emails before looking away for a moment to have it fill right back up). Sisyphus would be proud. 

So perhaps law firms and insurers/employers should start designating a specific email for receiving med-legal reports and make sure those email addresses are diligently monitored and routed to the right desk.

Further, now that we will be able to conclusively show when a report was transmitted to the parties, the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board can be a bit more strict with requiring diligence to get these files moved along to resolution.

One can only hope.

Gregory Grinberg is managing partner of Gale, Sutow & Associates’ S.F. Bay South office and a certified specialist in workers’ compensation law. This post is reprinted with permission from Grinberg’s WCDefenseCA blog.