Following a public hearing on July 1 and a review of comments, the Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) has made revisions to its Copy Service Fee Schedule regulations and is revising the proposed regulations for an additional public comment period of 15 days. Members of the public are invited to present written comments regarding the proposed modifications to dwcrules@dir.ca.gov until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, October 1.

The proposed revisions include:

1) Deleting provisions for fees incurred as a result of “authorizations” from the fee schedule as the fee schedule applies to records subpoenaed by copy services.
2) Adding a requirement for case information to be included in the bills for copy services and changing the use of billing codes to optional.
3) Clarifying that the claims administrator is responsible to pay the actual cost incurred for records obtained by Public Records Act requests from the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau and the Employment Development Department.
4) Clarifying that the claims administrator is not responsible to pay the flat rate when records that are subpoenaed can be obtained through the Public Records Act or were previously obtained by a subpoena by the same party and served from the same source unless there is good cause.
5) Increasing fees for X-rays as a survey showed that these costs often exceeded the Official Medical Fee Schedule.

The regulations can be found online on the DWC regulations page.