California Workers' Comp

CA: Business Insider Falls for Insurer Propaganda

Business Insider published a cringy slop of insurer talking points, uncritically parroting insurers’ preferred narrative about the coming increase...

Provider Alert: Coventry's MPN Site Is a Security Joke—and a Legal Disaster

Coventry is brazenly violating California law—and it’s impossible to tell whether it’s the result of astonishing incompetence or outright disregard for basic security and com...

Diabolical Discounts: Rampant Anthem PPO Carnage

Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) Anthem Blue Cross is enabling egregious abuse of California providers at scale. Since June, dozens of claims administrators have ...

Alert: Innovative Claim Solutions' Misleading “ePay” Message

Third-Party Administrator (TPA) Innovative Claim Solutions (ICS) sent a misleading message to providers, counterfactually claiming to be “phasing out” paper checks—and potent...

Diabolical Discounts: Berkshire Hathaway's Reimbursement Roulette (Part 1)

A sad fact about California workers’ comp: once a doctor joins a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), there’s no predicting how devastating the impact on practice revenue w...

Sedgwick: CA Doctors Still Waiting for Purloined PPO Reimbursement

In January, Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc. admitted to shortchanging a California orthopedic practice by hundreds of thousands of dollars—thanks to bogus Preferred...

CA RFA Hell: Affirmative Cites the Most Cynical Excuse Yet to Deny Care

What’s the most absurd, bureaucratic, procedurally abusive excuse a claims administrator ever used to deny care to an injured worker?We’ve seen our share of bad-faith ...

CA OMFS Update: Physician Services (Q3 2025)

California’s Division of Workers’ Compensation (CA DWC) issued a third-quarter update to the Physician and Non-Physician Practitioner portion of the Official Medical Fee Sche...

City of Riverside Pays MD $31 by Triple-Stacking PPOs

This week’s Diabolical Discounter is the City of Riverside. This self-insured public employer slashed a doctor’s reimbursement for a municipal worker’s Evaluation and Managem...

DWC Data: Texas Delivers, California Dodges

The Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation (TX DWC) and the California Division of Workers’ Compensation (CA DWC) each hold a sacred public trust to oversee the treatment of...

CA Advances New Med-Legal Law. Will CA DWC Ignore It?

On June 2, the California Assembly unanimously passed Assembly Bill 1293, which aims to improve the state’s Medical-Legal process for resolving disputes between injure...

CA DWC Ignores IBR Law That Protects Doctors

California’s Division of Workers’ Compensation (CA DWC) is violating state law daily by failing to timely assign payment disputes to Independent Bill Review (IBR).Maxi...