By all accounts, October was not a good month for the Division of Workers’ Compensation. First, Administrative Director Carrie Nevans officially had to vacate her office due to inaction by the state Senate. She returned to her former position as chief deputy AD, a post she held what seems like a decade ago. This happened near the end of the month in a relatively quiet announcement from the Governor’s Office. Also, Dr. Anne Searcy, the Division’s executive medical director, announced her resignation to go to work in the private sector with Zenith Insurance. Finally, Court Administrator Keven Star had already left DWC by September when he was called up for a one-year deployment with the United States Army in support of U.S. commitments in Iraq. Though it is debatable whether Star’s departure added further to the anxiety created by the EAMS implementation, it certainly didn’t help.
The elusive revisions to the permanent disability rating schedule (PDRS) are being put on hold until next year for reasons not fully possible to articulate.
None of this is to suggest that the Division has been cast adrift soon to run aground. Nevans is still at the helm, but it remains to be seen whether her effectiveness has been diminished by returning to what appears to be her permanent rank after her tenure as brevet administrative director.
The consequences of the failure to confirm her nomination can most immediately be seen with the delay in adoption of the permanent disability rating schedule. It does seem a bit too coincidental that the schedule seems to have been in the same line of fire as Nevans, suggesting that Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata failed to fully consider that, by tying the two together, both could fail as well.
Furthermore, the sense that the PDRS was pretty much ready to be adopted and now is delayed seems to fly in the face of the administration’s oft-stated position that appointments would not be used to leverage substantive regulatory actions.
But if it intends to hold out, the administration could find itself at a table while the meeting is going on elsewhere.
The more pressing need is to find a replacement for Dr. Searcy. The Medical Unit of the DWC wields enormous power. It oversees the QME process, certifies medical provider networks, develops treatment guidelines for the medical treatment utilization schedule, and assists in developing fee schedules. These are all core functions of the Division, and greatly affect the ability to implement the reforms of SB 228 and SB 899. That more than four years from the date Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 899 we are still having this conversation on implementing some of its core elements underscores the resistance to change inside and outside DWC, and the slow path to reform that does not end with a highly publicized bill-signing ceremony.
Furthermore, all this is within the context of the electoral process. As the bureaucracy and advocates start to look with glistening eyes toward the end of the Schwarzenegger administration in 2010, they also cast a jaded eye at doing anything of substance in the here and now, even if it is of demonstrable benefit to injured workers.
Great gains must be institutionalized to be sustainable, and there is precious little in what has happened in the past six years that will survive the 2010 elections unless there is a concerted effort, both legislatively and within the bureaucracy, to bring some sense of closure to anything of substance.
The litany of open items still subject to regulatory or judicial “clarification” touches on virtually every aspect of the benefit delivery system. The one clear issue – apportionment – that has been effectively resolved by the Supreme Court is likely the one issue most in the crosshairs of legislative unwinding once labor feels it controls two out of three branches of government.
There is a clear – and now very large – majority in both houses of the Legislature that doesn’t care one whit about Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor. To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, for those who live in Rio Linda that means that if by August 1, 2011 we are right back to where we were on August 1, 2001, that’s fine. We can always blame insurance companies for the mess.