We’ve all seen ratings from various sources – the DEU, opposing counsel, clients, and professional raters. 1 My question to all of you dear readers is – what do you like to see in a professional permanent disability rating?
As I mentioned previously, each of these cases is about 50 pages long, so there is clearly no substitute for reading them for yourself. However, here’s Ogilvie II and Almaraz/Guzman II in five sentences:1
What do these cases mean for the practitioner?
It turns out that this website is actually in the top 5% of all blogs in the WORLD. Where did I get this incredible statistic? The Internets, of course.1
While there are some 133,000,000 blogs in the world, all but 7,400,000 of them have been abandoned. 2 Since I add a blog post on average at least once a week, I’m quite safely in the top 7.4 million blogs. That doesn’t even count the number of updates to the permanent impairment and permanent disability calculators.
Top 5%! I wish I had prepared a speech.
Unfortunately, one of the coolest features of my calculators is that some of them will give you the answer you’re looking for before you’ve even finished typing the search term. This works with the:
While these are all very cool while you’re sitting at your computer, I found out (much to my dismay) that this system didn’t work at all when using these online calculators from my cell phone! 1 Well, I’ve updated the calculators to make them more compatible with more phones.2
Save yourself from your own workers’ compensation claim and just leave that heavy rating manual at home.
I was at the San Jose WCAB on Friday. Since recently discovering that I could run this website’s permanent disability rating calculators from my phone’s web browser, this was the first time I left my rating manual, money chart, and date wheel in the car.1
It was great. That morning I used my phone to:
The benefit for me is not so much that I don’t have to carry the rating manuals, dollar value charts, and date wheels. Unlike these tools, my phone is not something I’m going to misplace or loan and never see again.
The best part is that if I want to refer back to the calculation I just performed, I can just e-mail it to myself!
I was recently sent feedback about the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator on this website. 1 Here’s how I’ve incorporated that feedback:
There are two other issues I’m thinking about:
How would you change these calculators? What else would you like to see? What do you hate about them? Shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment!
Last week I posted about a recent case from the San Jose WCAB that indicated a life pension SAWW1 increase is applied on the first January 1 after the date of injury. You can find a download of the XYZZXSJO2 case here.
I’ve just finished the COLA / SAWW future life pension rate calculator to determine what the future life pension rates are assuming a COLA / SAWW increase of 4.7% per year. If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester for this COLA / SAWW calculator for life pension increases, please drop me a line and ask for access. 2
Please keep in mind that this is not a life pension with SAWW / COLA increase commutation calculator. The actuarial math involved in performing that calculation is … intense.
As an interesting side note, this week I saw my very first DEU commutation of a life pension with COLA increase. Unlike the typical commutations everyone receives from the DEU, this commutation calculation was devoid of the actual methodology used. I was pretty disappointed to find this out.
No matter! Help beta test the new calculator by dropping me a line. After you’ve given it a whirl, let me know what you think.
Last week while Steve was at the Sacramento WCAB he heard about a recent case that held the COLA / SAWW adjustments and increases are calculated based upon the first January 1 following the date of injury. 12
This case involving SIF (the subsequent injuries fund) is from the San Jose WCAB. The name of the case is “XYZZXSJO2 v. Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund, ADJ 1510738, SJO 0251902”. The name of the Applicant was anonymized to protect their identity. 34
Download a copy of XYZZXSJO2 now!
Thus far the conventional wisdom has been that the COLA/SAWW increases are calculated starting with the first January 1 after life pension gets paid out. This is a tremendous change in the COLA/SAWW calculation of life pension.
Assuming a 1/1/2003 injury at exactly 70% permanent partial disability, there would be 426.5 weeks of permanent disability paid after the permanent and stationary date before the life pension gets paid out. This equates to 8.2 years from the permanent and stationary date that has, thus far, not been taken into account with life pension calculations to date. To put this in perspective, if someone had an injury on 1/1/2003 and became P&S on that same date5 , the traditional method of calculating the life pension with COLA / SAWW increase would be too low by approximately 44%.
At the moment I’m finalizing a COLA / SAWW life pension calculator to determine what the future life pension rates are assuming a COLA / SAWW increase of 4.7% per year. If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester for this COLA / SAWW calculator for life pension increases, please drop me a line and ask for access.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a citation for the 4.7% COLA / SAWW increase, but I believe it to be the offiical average used by the DEU6 to calculate commutations of COLA / SAWW increases and adjustments. If you have an official citation or document from the DEU, please drop me a line so I can include that citation here!
I had an interesting e-mail exchange with a friend (and fellow workers’ compensation professional) the other day.1
We were discussing the impacts of Ogilvie on 2005 schedule ratings. He had asked me whether I intended to update the 2005 permanent disability rating calculator to include FEC Ranks after the scheduled 8. I believe he had suggested FEC Ranks 9 through 20.
I have no intention of manufacturing FEC Ranks 9 through 20 for the following reasons:
When I had discussed the impact of Ogilvie earlier, I had pointed out that in some cases the resulting formula will dictate that you use a different FEC Rank than the one indicated by the affected body part. In other cases you will need to use an entirely new FEC adjustment factor. In order to keep the 2005 disability calculator current I will eventually have to create a way for the user to override a body part’s standard FEC Rank and specify a new FEC Rank or their own FEC adjustment factor.
I’m not in any particular rush to develop this feature since Ogilvie seems to require three years of post-injury earnings. I doubt we’re going to see litigation begin in earnest over Ogilvie issues for another 18 to 24 months.
A few weeks ago I posted about the Multiple Disabilities Table for combining disabilities with injuries prior to 2005.
For injuries after 2005 we must turn to the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule. When combining disabilities for injuries after 2005 there are several possible alternatives. You can:
