Health Net Moves Into Workers’ Compensation

Woodland Hills-based Health Net, the state’s second largest health maintenance organization, is expanding into the workers’ compensation market in California by offering managed medical services for injured workers who are covered by self-insured employers and other workers’ compensation providers.

The move by the unit of Health Systems International Inc. is the latest of several by California HMOs to directly or indirectly enter the workers’ compensation market following recent state legislative reforms.

Under its new COMP-24 program, Health Net will provide a network of physicians, hospitals and other providers to manage medical services for workers’ compensation cases. The HMO previously had not provided medical services for workers’ compensation.

Health Net also announced its first contract to provide that service in California, to clients of AIG Claim Services Inc., a subsidiary of American International Group Inc., which claims to be the largest underwriter of commercial and industrial insurance in the United States.