Author: WorkCompAcademy

The Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) has posted an updated DWC Form 7 (Notice to Employees-Injuries caused By Work) on its website.

The updated Form 7 contains additional information required by Assembly Bill 1870, as enacted in 2024, which amended Labor Code section 3550(d)(4) to require notice to injured workers that: (1) they may consult a licensed attorney to advise them of their rights under workers’ compensation laws; and (2) in most instances, attorney’s fees will be paid out of what they recovery as a result of their claims. The amendment to Labor Code section 3550 becomes operative on January 1, 2025.

According to the Bill Analysis by the legislature, “Injured workers that have access to a lawyer generally have more success in navigating the workers’ compensation system. Injured workers who are represented by an attorney are more likely to challenge any initial denial of benefits and ultimately receive treatment and workers’ compensation benefits for their workplace injuries.”

“According to the California Judicial Counsel one of the main reasons civil litigants give for not retaining a lawyer is that they cannot afford one. The same perception likely applies for injured workers who do not seek legal help with their workers’ compensation case. However, attorneys in the workers’ compensation system are generally not paid until the case is resolved and are paid out of the injured worker’s recovery. Additionally, attorney fees must be approved by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board.”

“In each of the last six years, an average of 1,810 unrepresented injured workers asked to have their denial of benefits adjudicated. In each of those same six years, an average of 145,799 represented injured workers asked to have their denial of benefits adjudicated.”

“This bill requires notice of an employee’s right to consult an attorney, in relation to their workers’ compensation claim, be included on the Employees’ Rights posters posted by employers. In general, employers must replace state and federal labor law posters whenever the language of the employment law changes. At a minimum, this tends to happen annually.”

The updated notice, which is posted in English and Spanish versions, contains all of the information mandated under Labor Code section 3550(d) and can be used by employers to comply with the statute’s requirement that a notice be posted at the worksite advising employees of their rights under the state’s workers’ compensation laws.

The new version of the notice has been approved by the Office of Administrative Law and information regarding obtaining a copy of the form can be found at California Code of Regulations, title 8, section 9881.1. The form is available at no charge by downloading it from the web at www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/forms.html or by request from the DWC Information Services Center at 1-800-736-7401.

The California Attorney General joined a coalition of 50 states and territories in announcing two significant cooperation agreements and settlements with Heritage Pharmaceuticals and, in the near future, Apotex totaling $49.1 million to resolve allegations that both companies engaged in widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition, and unreasonably restrain trade on numerous generic prescription drugs.

As part of the settlement agreements, both companies have agreed to cooperate in the ongoing multistate litigations against 30 corporate defendants and 25 individual executives. Both companies have further agreed to a series of internal reforms to ensure fair competition and compliance with antitrust laws.

A motion for preliminary approval of the $10 million settlement with Heritage was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut in Hartford. A settlement with Apotex for $39.1 million is contingent upon obtaining signatures from all necessary states and territories and will be finalized and filed for approval in the U.S. District Court soon.

The three cases against these companies stem from a series of investigations built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of the different conspiracies alleged in each case, a database of over 20 million documents, and a separate database containing millions of call detail records and contact information for over 600 sales and pricing individuals in the generics industry.

Each complaint addresses a different set of drugs and defendants and shows how an interconnected web of industry executives meant to be competitors met up for industry dinners, “girls’ nights out,” lunches, cocktail parties, golf outings, and communicated through frequent telephone calls, emails, and text messages, sowing the seeds for their illegal agreements.

Defendants used terms like “fair share,” “playing nice in the sandbox,” and “responsible competitor” to describe how they unlawfully discouraged competition, raised prices, and enforced an ingrained culture of collusion. Among the records obtained by the coalition is a two-volume notebook containing the contemporaneous notes of one of the coalition’s cooperators that memorialized his discussions during phone calls with competitors and internal company meetings over a period of several years.

The first complaint included Heritage and 17 other corporate defendants, two individual Defendants, and 15 generic drug manufacturers. Two former executives from Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Jeffery Glazer and Jason Malek, have since entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating.

The second complaint was filed against Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers. The complaint names 16 individual senior executive defendants. The third complaint, which will be tried first, focuses on 80 primarily topical generic drugs that account for billions of dollars of sales in the United States and names 26 corporate defendants and 10 individual defendants.

Six additional pharmaceutical executives have entered into settlement agreements with the coalition and have been cooperating to support the coalition’s claims in all three cases.  Connecticut led a coalition of nearly all states and territories in filing the three antitrust complaints, starting with the first in 2016.

If a party purchased a qualifying generic prescription drug between 2010 and 2018, they may be eligible for compensation. To determine eligibility, call 1-866-290-0182 (Toll-Free), email info@AGGenericDrugs.com, or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.

The California Attorney General joined the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Puerto Rico.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the inaugural AWS IMAGINE Grant: Children’s Health Innovation Award, which recognizes visionary institutions in the nonprofit healthcare sector who are using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced cloud services to drive progress across critical children’s health domains.

This group represents AWS’s first cohort of recipients of the investment in children’s health announced earlier this summer. The goal is to empower nonprofit organizations to leverage cloud technology in order to accelerate their mission. The IMAGINE Grant program offers support both financially and strategically to the grant winners. As part of the program, it asked for proposals for pilot projects, proofs of concept, or existing programs that utilize technology in a new or expanded way.

The event gathered leaders and innovators to discuss how technology can positively impact healthcare and health research globally.

“We are thrilled to support these organizations as they pursue groundbreaking advancements in children’s health, pediatric care, and research enabled by the AWS Cloud,” said Dave Levy, head of worldwide public sector at AWS. “From applications of generative AI to enable precision care in pediatric genomics, to AI-powered tools for physicians that will provide access to more data insights than ever before, these organizations have bold plans to improve children’s health outcomes on a global scale. We’re excited to work closely with them to realize these goals with cloud technology.”

The tech giant selected nine winners from across the globe on Oct. 30. The 2024 Children’s Health Innovation Award recipients are: Texas Children’s Hospital, Rady Children’s Hospital and Institute for Genomic Medicine, Children’s Mercy Hospital,Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Association of Public Health Laboratories, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation, Brightpoint, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine.

San Diego based Rady Children’s Hospital and Institute for Genomic Medicine is building pediatric genomics large language models (LLMs) to improve treatment of rare pediatric diseases, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation is applying generative AI techniques to provide clinicians with real-time insights into HIV patient risks in children, and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center is developing advanced machine learning (ML) and generative AI models that will drive improvements in translational research and broad-scale changes in precision cancer care for children worldwide. These are just a few of the high-impact projects planned by grant recipients.

Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine is a non-profit research organization embedded within Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. It pioneered a medical revolution to end the diagnostic odyssey for neonatal and pediatric rare disease. It is now moving to end the therapeutic odyssey.

The Genetics Division of UCSD Medical School is actively involved in clinical care, research, teaching and service. The Division sees more than 4,000 patients per year in a variety of clinics, primarily as outpatients at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego (RCHSD), but also throughout Southern California, and in Mexico. The Division has an active inpatient consult service, and also sees more than 500 inpatients per year. Faculty members in the Division presently hold more than $6 million in grants and contracts, and have published over 60 original articles and chapters within the last two years.

“Leveraging AI and cloud computing is a critical step for Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine as we work towards making genetic testing more equitable, inexpensive and widely available,” said Matthew Bainbridge, Ph.D, Supervising Research Scientist at Rady Genomics, a nonprofit research institute at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego. “Working with AWS allows us to utilize their expertise in AI and cloud computing to improve the speed and access to pediatric genetic testing, ultimately shortening a child’s diagnostic odyssey.”

These organizations are poised to drive transformation across a variety of children’s health disciplines, with this cycle focusing on projects that accelerate pediatric research,o advance maternal child total health, and empower the pediatric workforce and caregivers.

As hospitals reconsider how and where they deliver care to patients, many are seeing the hospital-at-home model as a promising approach to improve value. Hospital-at-home enable some patients who need acute-level care to receive care in their homes, rather than in a hospital. This care delivery model has been shown to reduce costs, improve outcomes and enhance the patient experience.

In November 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the Acute Hospital Care At Home program to provide hospitals expanded flexibility to care for patients in their homes.

On September 30, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a report on the agency’s study of the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) initiative, which allows certain Medicare-certified hospitals to treat patients with inpatient-level care at home. While the initiative was launched during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (CAA, 2023) extended the waivers and flexibilities associated with the AHCAH initiative until December 31, 2024. The CAA, 2023 also required CMS to conduct a study and analysis on the AHCAH initiative and post such a report on a CMS website by September 30, 2024.

The new study fulfills the requirement in the CAA, 2023, and evaluates several aspects of the AHCAH initiative, including:

– – Criteria participating hospitals used to determine which individuals would qualify to receive services under AHCAH.
– – Demographic information on beneficiaries treated under the initiative.
– – Clinical conditions treated and diagnosis-related groups associated with discharges from the inpatient setting versus those under AHCAH.
– – Quality of patient care for those patients treated in the brick-and-mortar inpatient setting relative to patients with similar conditions and characteristics treated under AHCAH.
– – Beneficiary and caregiver experience with AHCAH.
– – Medicare spending and utilization for patients who received care in the inpatient setting and through AHCAH.
– – Quantity, mix, and intensity of services furnished through brick-and-mortar inpatient care relative to those served under the AHCAH initiative.

The study found that AHCAH-approved hospitals used a variety of sources and methods to establish patient selection criteria to determine which individuals would qualify for AHCAH services. These criteria were largely rooted in published hospital at home (HaH) literature, in addition to the individual hospital’s experience and resource capabilities to provide inpatient-level care in the home environment.

Participating hospitals indicated that these criteria were developed and utilized with the intent to ensure that eligible patients were willing and able to participate in a HaH program, that such patients were clinically and psychosocially appropriate to safely receive care in the home, and that patients’ home and community environments were conducive to the safe and effective provision of acute inpatient care at home.

CMS hosted a series of four virtual listening sessions with various groups of stakeholders, including patients and caregivers who had participated in the AHCAH initiative, to learn about their experiences with care and gather feedback on ways to improve the program. Additionally, CMS collected anecdotal information on shared lessons learned through site visits, direct correspondence with patients and hospital program operators, and other means, contributing to the qualitative analysis of beneficiaries’ experiences with the AHCAH initiative.

Overall, the information collected and detailed in the study suggests that patients and caregivers had positive experiences with the care provided in the home setting through the AHCAH initiative. The feedback was generally consistent with evidence concerning patient experience with HaH programs more broadly. This positive feedback was mirrored by clinicians’ experiences providing care to patients under the AHCAH initiative. More detailed findings on the patient experience of care under AHCAH and the interpretation and limitations of the underlying data and analysis are presented in the report.

The American Hospital Association has considerable information about providing HaH services for it’s members, as does the California Hospital Association.