Reforming Workers’ Comp

As your editorial indicated, workers’ compensation is a sore subject with California’s business community (“The Benefit That Ate California: The Scandal of Workers’ Comp,” Nov. 4). Rising costs have saddled industry with tremendous insurance premiums affecting primarily small and minority-owned businesses. Complaints about inadequate benefits, fraud and misconduct by doctors and lawyers have made matters worse. Action must be taken to protect employers and improve workers’ compensation benefits.

The 1989 Workers’ Compensation Reform Act was a cooperative effort by state leaders, employers, insurers, labor representatives, physicians and attorneys to increase benefits to injured workers. To accomplish this, cost-control measures in other areas of workers’ compensation were instituted.

One major component of reform was the formation of the Industrial Medical Council (IMC) to eliminate health provider abuses. The council began late last year to implement its mandate. Though understaffed, the IMC strove to fulfill this task. By January, over 2,000 qualified medical evaluators (QMEs) had been appointed. The IMC currently is developing regulations to control fraudulent advertising by physicians and to implement the entire new QME system.

Unfortunately, the IMC has lost one-fourth of its staff to economic cuts because of the recent $15-billion state budget deficit. However, the IMC will continue its efforts to eliminate unnecessary employer costs, establish and enforce regulations to eliminate abuses and, most important, protect the rights of the state’s most valuable resource, its 12.6 million workers.

IRA H. MONOSSON MD

Chairman, Industrial Medical Council

Calif. Department of Industrial Relations

South San Francisco