New AMA Impairment Rating Guides to Let Stakeholders Propose Changes

When the Workers' Compensation Institute's national conference convenes online next week, one of the best-attended sessions is expected to be an inside look at the American Medical Association's new way of devising impairment rating guidelines. Gone is the decades-long practice of releasing a hardcover edition of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment every 10 years or so. Various versions of the guides have been adopted by more than 30 states' workers' comp statutes, and the latest, the sixth edition, has been attacked by major court decisions in two...