Author: WorkCompAcademy

The American Bar Association standards currently require law schools to use a “valid and reliable test” in admissions decisions. For years, the only standardized test that automatically met that criteria was the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), though the ABA in November 2021 added the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) as an acceptable alternative.

The council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has advanced a proposal to make standardized admissions tests optional at accredited law schools. On Friday, a majority of the council voted for an amendment to its testing mandate, Standard 503, at its hybrid meeting in Atlanta.

The proposal is expected to go to the ABA House of Delegates for consideration at its midyear meeting in New Orleans in February 2023, and was amended Friday to state that if adopted the changes would not be implemented until the fall of 2025.

The push to change Standard 503 comes after the council said in November 2021 that ABA accredited law schools could also use the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, when considering applicants. The amended standard could end a testing requirement that for more than 50 years has been the foundation of law school admissions.

Plans to alter the standard proved divisive. In May, the council decided to allow public comment for 90 days on the proposed amendments. Those in favor of relaxing Standard 503 said it would open law school doors to more underrepresented students and improve diversity in the legal profession.

According to the Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT, from 2017 to 2018, the mean LSAT score for white test-takers was 11.5 points higher than the mean score for Black test-takers. The council’s 2022 report also suggested disparities between white test-takers and Native Americans, Hispanics and other minorities.

“I believe by eliminating the standardized test requirement the legal field could possibly become more diverse and inclusive,” wrote Jameelah Kates, an African American woman, who was among the many to write in support of relaxing the standard.

But those opposed to the changes argued the LSAT is still the best way to determine an aspiring lawyer’s readiness to meet the demands of law school and provides an added protection because of the heavy debt burden that attending entails.

In September, 60 law school deans mounted a defense of the standard. They argued that relaxing it would not necessarily even the playing field for underrepresented students. In their letter, the deans feared that the changes would be “premature and could have effects contrary to what is desired.”

“Specifically, we fear that an unintended consequence of removing Standard 503’s requirement that JD applicants take a valid and reliable admissions test will be to diminish the diversity of law schools’ incoming classes, by increasing reliance on grade-point average and other criteria that are potentially more infused with bias,” the letter states.

David Klieger, director of legal education at ETS, a nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization, echoed those concerns at the council meeting.

“While the future cannot be known with absolute certainty, if the proposal is approved, there is a significant risk that competitive stresses will pressure law schools to consider lowering admission standards,” Klieger said. “The stakes here are great. Law school is unlike so many other areas of higher education, and getting this wrong is enormously consequential.”

The push to relax Standard 503 is not without precedent. A similar plan was floated in 2018 to get rid of the law school entry exam requirements but was withdrawn shortly before the House of Delegates had a chance to vote on it.

John Duncan is a former director of the California Department of Industrial Relations and served under two California governors.

He just published a commentary on CalMatters that claims “last minute changes to Cal/OSHA’s COVID regulations are a mistake.” And clarifies that there “is a right way and wrong way to draft a new regulation.”

He says that when adopting difficult workplace policies, rule makers should notify the public and involve stakeholders. Unfortunately, the California Occupational Safety and Health Agency is poised to make a mistake next month on their two-year extension of California’s COVID rules by squeezing in a significant change at the last minute.

Last month, four members of the Cal/OSHA Standards Board ordered the agency’s staff to rewrite the draft regulations and add exclusion pay, which is essentially paid sick leave for an employee who tests positive or is exposed to COVID. If they change the regulation, stakeholders across California will see a significant change made just before the final vote on this two-year extension of COVID precautions.  

The merits of whether Cal/OSHA should continue requiring exclusion pay is not the issue, he says. There is a legitimate discussion about exclusion pay, and another legitimate discussion about whether emergency regulations should be extended past the end of the COVID emergency declaration in a few months. My point here is that resolving complicated and important questions requires time to gather data, talk to affected communities and generate workable solutions.

“In my tenure as director of California’s Department of Industrial Relations, occupational safety and health standards were subject to a thorough vetting process, centered around the goal of establishing consensus by using scientific evidence and other underlying data. Maintaining a fair, even-handed and transparent process is critical for ensuring democratic rulemaking and effective compliance with standards that protect California’s workers and employers alike.”

“The question today is how should a regulation be drafted in such a challenging climate?”

He then goes on to say that the answer is with data, careful preparation and stakeholder involvement. In 2009, Cal/OSHA adopted similar regulations for aerosol transmissible diseases in health care settings – and this was not some weak regulation with illusory protections. It was a first-in-the-nation standard and included specific provisions related to training, protective equipment, recordkeeping and more.

Most surprisingly, the rules passed without any opposition when the Cal/OSHA Standards Board voted on it. It was something that may seem unthinkable in today’s divisive times: a consensus regulation based on scientific data, expert stakeholder input and careful discussion.

“Cal/OSHA should look to its past successes and not make such a big change at the last second. Rulemaking is occasionally awkward, loud, disagreeable and painfully slow, but it is the best system out there for such important decisions.”

He concludes his commentary by saying there is “a slogan many sports teams and athletes follow: respect the process. That is an appropriate theme as California once again strives to lead in addressing an important workplace health and safety issue.”

EK Health Services Inc. is a national workers’ compensation managed care organization, and is a major vendor of utilization and bill review services for California claims administrators.

EK Health just announced the launch of Billtelligent, a proprietary technology that it says is taking medical bill review in workers’ compensation to the next level. Billtelligent eliminates barriers for EK Health, empowering an independence the national managed care company had not previously realized.

Billtelligent leverages a unique cloud-based, modular design focused on efficient bill handling through innovative strategies, supported by nimble technology. The company says it promotes flexibility through intelligent routing, automation, auto-adjudication and the ability to customize workflows with incredible specificity (without cumbersome management requirements).

“We did not want to create another software for software’s sake,” said Eunhee Kim, EK Health’s Owner & CEO. “With Billtelligent, we have control at all levels and we can bring the change our industry deserves. We will be faster, flexible and more accurate. This gives us the ability to better optimize managed care strategies and improve quality of care for injured workers – which is our ultimate focus.”

EK Health says it is keeping with its promise to transform the workers’ compensation industry as an innovator dedicated to integrity, transparency, and customer-focused solutions.

“We have been asked many times to ‘demystify medical bill review’, due to the unnecessary complexities, exorbitant fees and undisclosed revenue sharing that exists today,” shared Zebrah L. Jahnke, VP of Business Development. “We knew offering transparency required full ownership of our processes and technology.”

“It was clear to me that we needed to be free from the constraints of leased software to fully realize our potential. With Billtelligent, we have direct access to PPOs, allowing us to create our own onboarding and custom network design,” Kerri Wilson, EK Health’s President & Chief Operating Officer explained.

The company say the benefits and and advantages include:

– – Stands alone in design, functionality, and customization
– – Was built from the ground up by EK Health, giving complete independence and ownership
– – Is a modern bill review technology designed to evolve
– – Removes barriers through automation & limitless creative workflows
– – Replaces complexity with simplicity
– – Supports EK Health client programs with reduced turnaround times
– – Ensures quality results through efficient execution
– – Intelligent trigger-based routing for near real-time bill processing as the rule, batch processing as the exception
– – Real-time access; real-time status; real-time fixes – all before a bill is finalized
– – Sophisticated pended-bills load balancing to optimize workforce productivity
– – User-friendly, customizable client portal allows external users access to view bills for approval/denials within the bill’s life-cycle
– – Highly configurable and flexible system requiring minimal code changes to introduce new features, adapt to future requirements and onboard new clients-
– – Limitless unique bill routing workflows, automate agreements, and manage client-specific network structures

Through this innovative technology, EK Health says it is not just meeting clients where they are today, EK Health is taking them into the future with nimble solutions realizing immediate gains.

The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California (WCIRB), in collaboration with nine other workers’ compensation rating bureaus, has jointly released COVID-19 and Workers’ Compensation – Phase II of the Multibureau Collaboration.

This updated study includes two years of claims data – Accident Years (AY) 2020 and 2021 through year-end 2021 – from the following workers’ compensation bureaus: California, Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI).

One result of this effort is the creation of a COVID-19 claims database, which includes a comprehensive view of COVID-19 claim characteristics and trends. The analysis does not include experience from self-insured employers or denial and expense-only claims.

Key findings in the report include:

– – This analysis relied on data from 45 jurisdictions, representing $1.1 billion in COVID-19-related losses from about 117,000 claims. The average claim cost during the two-year period was approximately $9,600.
– – On average, COVID-19 claims decreased from 11 percent of workers’ comp lost-time claims reported in AY 2020 to 4 percent in AY 2021 across the jurisdictions included in the study.
– – For California, COVID-19 claim shares were somewhat higher in 2020 with 13 percent of lost time claims involving COVID-19. For 2021, the California COVID-19 claim share of 4 percent was similar to the national average.
– – Approximately 75 percent of reported COVID-19 lost-time claims were from the healthcare sector, while that sector only accounts for about 9 percent of non-COVID-19 lost-time claims.
– – In California, with its relatively broad presumptions, about one-half of COVID-19-insured employer claims were from the healthcare sector.
– – The share of COVID-19 claims and losses was largest in the second and fourth quarters of AY2020.
– – COVID-19 was not a significant loss driver for most industry segments.
– – However, COVID-19 claims in the Healthcare sector accounted for nearly 50% of all lost-time claims and more than 20% of paid+caselosses.
– – For most states, the largest share of COVID-19 claims has been in the Healthcare industry sector.
– – Although COVID-19 claims have been a significant driver of overall claims for the Healthcare sector, COVID-19 claims represent a small share of claims for other industries.
– – Healthcare with Overnight Care (which includes retirement homes and nursing homes) had the highest relative share of COVID-19 claims.
– – Healthcare workers have had the highest share of indemnity-only claims (60%) and a relatively low share of medical-only claims (15%).
– – Most hospitality-industry claims have been medical-only (71%).
– – Average severities are relatively consistent among years.
– – Severities for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 claims were relatively stable across years.
– – On average, COVID-19 claims have closed faster than non-COVID-19 claims, primarily due to the higher prevalence of indemnity-only COVID-19 claims.

This updated report confirms significant findings from the WCIRB 2020 report and includes additional insights on industry sector and accident-quarter metrics. Claim and loss activity varied across jurisdictions, impacting individual states and sectors differently and at varying times. Uncertainties remain about the long-term impact of COVID-19.