California Workers' Comp

California's MPN Cesspool: Impossible by Design?

California’s Medical Provider Network (MPN) system is broken beyond repair, to the point where finding an MPN doctor is simply impossible for many injured workers. We’...

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...