Dave v. EAMS
A few months ago someone e-mailed me this video clip about an attorney struggling with EAMS. My thanks go out to Matthew Brueckner of the Law Office of Matthew Brueckner for putting this together.
Category: EAMS
New WCAB Regs, New EAMS Forms
According to a recent DIR news bulletin on November 17, 2008 the new WCAB Rules of Practice and Procedure were approved by the Office of Administrative Law and filed with the Secretary of the State and (apparently) made effective that same day. If you haven’t already reviewed the new regulations, now’s a good time. You can check them using the above links or download it here:
New WCAB Rules of Practice and Procedure (Effective 11-17-2008)
Since the new WCAB rules became effective, the new EAMS forms are now mandatory. The exceptions named in the above bulletin are:
- There will be a four-week “transition period” in effect through December 12, 2008 during which the “legacy” ((Read: non-EAMS)) forms will still be accepted.
- Forms requiring multiple signatures will be accepted in “legacy” form as long as the filer establishes that circulation began prior to November 17, 2008. ((I suppose the easiest way to demonstrate this is to point out that at least one of the signatures was dated prior to 11/17/2008.))
- Unrepresented injured workers will be allowed until February 17, 2009 to use “legacy” forms.
- Unrepresented injured workers who do not have access to a computer or typewriter will be allowed to fill in the new OCR forms by printing using block letters. ((Though, I suppose printing clearly in all-capital letters migh work better…)) ((Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk.))
Did you know there’s a handbook for the new Optical Character Recognition EAMS forms? You can check it out here or download it here:
OpenOffice v3.0: Helping with EAMS
MicroSoft has no one to blame but themselves for my deleting MicroSoft Office. Well, its partly Dell’s fault too, but that’s a long story I’ll tell some other time. (Short version: Dell repaired a prior laptop and shipped it to a construction site in Oakland.)
Once I tried OpenOffice, I never looked back. Its my preferred word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, office suite program. Not only is it better than MicroSoft office in just about every way, but its also completely free. You might be interested in trying it out because I believe it will help you tremendously with EAMS.
OpenOffice.org released version 3.0 of their program on October 13, 2008. It was so wildly popular that their website was crushed under the overwhelming demand. The three most important things to know about OpenOffice are:
- Its open source, so its completely free. So, there’s no reason not to give it a shot.
- It can open, edit, and save to any MS Office 2000, 2003, 2007, and WordPerfect formats.
- It can print or export any file to a PDF.
If you’re a Workers’ Compensation professional in California, you’re probably dealing with EAMS. Since filing things with EAMS means working with a lot of PDF’s. In order to keep from reinventing the wheel, it makes sense to save those PDF’s of the document cover sheets. But what if you need to make a small change later on? Well, OpenOffice v3.0 can help with that too.
Using an extension ((basically a small program)) OpenOffice can open and edit and re-save a PDF file. Not even Adobe, the company that promotes the PDF format ((I know that’s redundant.)) , does a good job of opening and editing PDF’s.
This is a really big deal to me because editing saved PDF’s is going to save me a lot of time editing settlement documents and various pleadings.
Update
I wrote the above about a month ago while I gave OpenOffice 3.0 a shot. It won’t install on my Vista laptop but works great on my XP desktop. I’ve reverted to OpenOffice 2.4 on the laptop while I wait for a fix. OpenOffice 2.4 is still free, but it won’t open MS Office 2007 formats (which not everyone is using anyhow) and cannot edit PDFs.
5 Reasons Why Your Office Staff Needs PDRater.com
In a prior post I talked about the top five PDRater.com features that make your life easier. But, when was the last time you thought about your office staff, hmm?
How can you make their job easier? Well, the good news is you don’t have to, I’ve given you all the tools to make your office run faster and more efficiently, saving you time and money.
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Top 5 MPN’s. Medical Provider Network lists, complete with logins and passwords. Whether you’re on the applicant or defense side, your staff is going to need access to these lists. You can find a doctor for your client or so you can give a list of doctors to opposing counsel.
- EAMS DWC to ADJ Number Search Engine. Chances are you’ve got cases with more than one “legacy” Board file number. With this search engine, you can search for the corresponding EAMS ADJ numbers. And, you can search for as many Board (or ADJ) numbers as you want at the same time, just by separating them with commas.
- EAMS Office Search Engine. When your staff is filling out documents for you, they’re going to need to know the correct name and address for all the parties. When they need to call opposing counsel, they can also look up the phone number with this search engine.
- EAMS Document Type and Document Title Search Engine. Your staff needs a quick way to find the exact EAMS document type and EAMS document title for every document cover sheet getting filed with the Board. Sure, they could comb through four or five pages of 3 point font on the Board’s form. Or, better yet, they could search and find exactly the document type and title they need.
- EAMS Body Part Codes. There are 62 different body part codes in the EAMS system. There’s no need to keep the EAMS chart on hand, just tell your staff what body part you want on the form and have them look it up on this website.
- DWC / WCAB / EAMS Forms. There are now more than 130 different forms, new and “legacy”, available on the DIR website. There’s no reason your staff should have to scroll up or down looking for the right form. Type in a few characters and get a direct link right to the exact form you need.
- Date Calculator. Sure, everyone in your office could have their own date wheel. In my experience, date wheels and money charts are two of the most commonly swiped office aides right after the good stapler and scotch tape. With a date calculator built into the website, all of your staff can quickly and easily calculate the number of days between two dates or what day it will be in a certain number of days.
So, there you have the top 5, er 7, PDRater.com website search engine and workers’ compensation calculators your staff is going to benefit from using. Registration for this site is quick, easy, and free. Save your staff some time and frustration by having them register for this website and try out the calculators, search engines, and links.
200th Registered User!
It was not very long ago I announced 100 registered users for this site. Today there are more than 200 registered users of this website. ((Photo courtesy of Mark Strozier.)) Since that time:
- I’ve added several new workers’ compensation calculators and EAMS search functions. ((Scroll down about halfway to see the list of new calculators.))
- I’ve also recently updated the look for the website.
- I’ve managed to publish a post every weekday. As of today, there will be 81 posts. ((As long as the economy and presidential election keeps giving me material, I’m not afraid of writer’s block.))
Wikipedia has this to say about the number 200:
- 200 MeV is the temperature of quark-gluon plasma phase transition. ((Of course it is…))
- An HTTP status code indicating a successful connection.
- The sum of dollars given in the classical Monopoly game to a player passing Go.