Average facility fees paid to ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) for treatment of injured workers in California have declined 27% per episode and 29% per procedure since fee schedule changes mandated by SB 863 were adopted in 2013 according to updated... Read More

God couldn’t be everywhere…….so he created Dr. Rudin. And today’s commentary features two cases on the issue of surgery and causation in which Dr. Rudin takes center stage. First from defense attorney Frank Nardo, Gloria Edwards... Read More

Here’s the latest batch of advanced postings for the October 2015 issue of Cal. Comp. Cases. Lexis.com and Lexis Advance subscribers can link to the case to read the complete headnotes and summaries. © Copyright 2015 LexisNexis. All rights... Read More

Cases that hold maximum medical improvement (MMI) as a bright line test to end all TTD “should no longer be followed,” according to the Missouri Supreme Court in Greer v Sysco Food Services , SC 94724 (Mo. 2015) 2015 MO Lexis 248 (Lexis Advance... Read More

Today’s post comes to us from Wade Adams of Liberty Mutual. He is our guest blogger and I will leave it to him to tell the tale: "This is a case where Dr. Rudin performed a lumbar fusion on a claimant who had a negative MRI, but positive... Read More

Anyone familiar with the Workers Compensation Research Institute’s 32-year history of providing the data and analysis that industry mavericks rely upon to understand, manage and effect real change have come to expect WCRI conferences to provide... Read More

The Second Injury Fund denied a claim of a worker who sat in a chair in the lunch room. When the chair broke he hurt his back. The Fund argued the worker failed to prove a work risk that he was not equally exposed to away from work Wright v. Roto-Rooter... Read More

An Oregon court held substantial evidence supported a decision by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board that medical services requested by a claimant were not compensable under Or. Rev. Stat. § 656.245(1)(a), which requires the employer... Read More

Today’s post comes to us from my dear colleague Jessica Leigh Julian of Marshall Dennehy. And it seems to me that there have been a flurry of proud defense lawyers standing up against the call of the scalpel. Jess joins Wade Adams this week in a... Read More

An employer has an obligation to provide medical treatment for a work-related injury when it received a request for care even if the employer has not finished its investigation, according to the recent court of appeals case, Downing v. McDonald's... Read More

Greater medical consensus could reduce geographic variability A recent study published by the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine suggests that there is geographic variation in the use of medical treatment guidelines that reaches... Read More

The employer lost its summary judgment in a suit by an employee involving an injury at work based on a plain error review by the court of appeals. The claimant had a pending worker's compensation case which had not resolved whether claimant had an... Read More

The employer lost its summary judgment in a suit by an employee involving an injury at work based on a plain error review by the court of appeals. The claimant had a pending worker's compensation case which had not resolved whether claimant had an... Read More

Many studies have analyzed why the medical componen t of workers' compensation costs have risen rapidly the past several years despite the recession. Explanations for the higher costs have ranged from increased workers' compensation prescription... Read More

Chicago , IL (CompNewsNetwork) - Ambulatory surgical treatment centers in geozip 607 now have their own fee schedule. When the ASTC schedule was created in 2009, it was based on the hospital outpatient schedule. Because there is no hospital in 607, the... Read More