Category: Daily News

EDD officials showed off the new website at their downtown Sacramento headquarters Thursday. The site, called UI Online, is being launched a year and a half late and has cost more than expected, but aims to greatly reduce the need to call the agency with questions about claims.

“It’s pretty good,” said Amandeep Kaur, one of a small number of Californians who have been given access to it so far. “It’s simple. It’s fast.”

Kaur told KCRA 3 she got laid off in April from a job at Apple in Elk Grove. She tried a few times to reach EDD by phone, waiting roughly 30 minutes for someone to answer, she said. Then, she was given access to the new website, which also comes in a mobile app. Connecting with EDD has been a breeze ever since, Kaur said.

This is the outcome EDD had hoped for in September 2013, when it launched a new software system its employees could use to process unemployment claims. But the version the public would use was delayed after that software launch failed and crippled much of EDD’s work.

“I think it was well worth the wait to finally roll out a system that all our customers can use,” said Sabrina Reed, EDD’s deputy director for unemployment insurance.

The new site, which cost $16 million, lets customers do most of the work of applying for benefits and makes it easier for the agency to contact people online. Of the 15,000 people given access to it so far, only two people have needed help using it, Reed said.

EDD plans to roll out the new site to 100,000 customers at a time, starting this weekend, until all 400,000 people currently receiving benefits have access.

That’s a fraction of the number of people who were collecting benefits during the height of the recession, roughly 1.5 million, according to EDD. That reduction has helped reduce a backlog of claims the agency processes and helped reduce the backlog of calls.

At one time, people may have called as many as 45 times before someone at EDD answered, said the agency’s spokesperson, Loree Levy. Now, that number is down to three times, Levy said.  

Aggressive claimant attorneys have launched constitutional attacks on workers’ compensation reforms in a number of states including California and Florida. The California Court of Appeal has scheduled oral argument in the the case of Frances Stevens v WCAB that challenges the IMR process. Stevens is now set for oral argument on September 30. Another similar constitutional challenge is working its way through the Third District Court of Appeal that recently agreed to hear the case of Ramirez v The State of California Department of Health Care Services.

In Florida, two high-profile workers’ compensation cases still sit on the desk of the Florida Supreme Court – (1) Castellanos v. Next Door Company and (2) Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg – both of which could have a negative impact on the Florida workers’ compensation system. The workers’ compensation system in Florida has continuously come under scrutiny from opponents looking to overhaul the reforms that were put in place in 2003 by Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature.

In the Castellanos case the Florida Supreme Court will decide if the 2003 and 2009 Amendments to the Florida attorney fee law are unconstitutional. In 2003, the Legislature amended the law and limited the amount of attorney’s fees. This severely limited the types of cases or claims an attorney could file. The Court will now decide if the law prevents certain cases or claimants the access to courts as allowed under the Constitution. The National Employment Lawyers Association has given its support to a suit asking the Florida Supreme Court to overturn a statutory limitation on prevailing-party attorneys’ fees in workers’ compensation cases, which the group argues violates the separation of powers doctrine and courts’ authority. The formula for calculating attorneys’ fees in a Florida’s workers’ compensation statute awarded the attorney in the Castellanos case $164 in fees for 107 hours of legal work.

In Westphal the Court of Appeal found that the law stipulating a 104-week limit on temporary benefits was unjust since it puts injured workers like Westphal in a no-win situation of being unable to receive temporary benefits while also not being eligible for permanent benefits. The appeals court concluded that the Florida statue that limited an injured worker to no more than 104 weeks of temporary disability benefits even when he is totally disabled was unconstitutional. Striking down the 1994 amendment to Florida’s workers’ compensation law that established the 104-week limit for temporary disability, the court re-established the previously existing 260-week limit. After rehearing the court re-interpreted the law to mean workers could apply for and receive permanent benefits at the end of the 104-week period because they are “deemed to be at maximum medical improvement as a matter of law,” even if they could one day return to work. The Florida Supreme Court decided to hear the case,

According to the Florida Division of Workers’ Compensation, the running list of reforms in 2003 included making changes to “Permanent Total Disability, Permanent Total Supplement, Permanent Partial Benefits, Practice Parameters and Protocols mandatory in medical care, changes to Independent Medical Examinations, Attorney Fee Award structure, Compliance, Exemptions, elimination of Supplemental Benefits,” among others.The slew of changes to the system focused on one important goal: getting an injured worker back to work, and doing so by weeding out fraud in the no-fault system. The focus wasn’t on making the insurers, medical field or attorneys happy, it was on the employer and the employee.

Business groups credit the Florida reforms for helping drive down insurance rates (down more than 50 percent) and welcoming significant cost savings that allow for the purchase of better policies and coverage for employees. Insurers credit the Florida reforms for opening up the marketplace and creating a healthy and competitive environment. The medical community credits the Florida reforms for adequate medical reimbursement and access to care. But what you won’t hear is trial lawyers crediting this “no-fault” system for much of anything.

Stakeholders in both California and Florida are closely watching these cases which should be decided in the coming months.

The White House Forum on Antibiotic Stewardship brought together some 150 representatives from food companies, retailers, drugmakers, farmers, medical societies and others involved in human and animal health to discuss limiting the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, animal feed and humans.

The Forum builds on a number of steps the Administration has taken to combat antibiotic resistance. In September 2014, President Obama signed Executive Order 13676 prioritizing Federal efforts to combat the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Administration also issued the National Strategy on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report with recommendations to address the crisis of the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. In March 2015, the Administration released the National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, a comprehensive plan that identifies critical actions for key Federal departments and agencies to enhance diagnosis and treatment and limit the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that drug-resistant bacteria, which stop responding to the medicines designed to kill them, cause 2 million illnesses and about 23,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. CDC Director Thomas Frieden said antibiotic resistance might be the single most important infectious disease threat today. “If we lose antibiotics, the medicine chest will be empty and it will not only undermine our ability to treat routine infections, but it will undermine much of modern medicine,” Frieden said on a conference call with reporters to announce the White House Forum. “We risk turning back the clock to a world where simple infections can be fatal just as they were a century ago.”

Among the topics under discussion will be developing guidelines and recommendations to control the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals and curtail their use in food animals.

Ahead of the meeting, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum directing Federal departments and agencies to create a preference for meat and poultry produced according to responsible antibiotic-use. The Presidential Food Service is also committing to serving meats and poultry that have not been treated with hormones or antibiotics. Separately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will announce that it has finalized changes to the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) regulation, an important piece of FDA’s overall strategy to promote the judicious use of medically important antibiotics in food-producing animals as it facilitates bringing the feed-use of such antibiotics under the oversight of licensed veterinarians.

Last month the California Supreme Court once again reiterated the minimal standard of causation required for a workers compensation claim. The Court reversed the Court of Appeal’s judgment. in the case of South Coast Framing v WCAB and pointed out that unlike tort law, causation in workers’ compensation need only be a contributing cause. With that in mind, the industry is constantly aware that continuous trauma claims can be established for a number of physical stressor’s in the workplace that contribute to an injury. But now, a new report may suggest that being “inactive” and doing nothing physical at work may similarly “contribute” to a litany of physical problems.

People who work desk-based jobs should aim to stand and do light activity for a total of four hours throughout the day, according to an international panel of experts. People should first work toward standing or doing light activity – like walking – for two hours per day, the panel said in a consensus statement. The panel was commissioned by Public Health England and the company Active Working CIC, which owns the Get Britain Standing campaign.

According to the report in Reuters Health, too much sitting has been linked to poor health outcomes over the past several years. Still, no one had set a baseline for just how much time workers should spend on their feet each day, said Gavin Bradley of Active Working CIC in Teddington, U.K. “People weren’t prepared to say what we said, which is how many hours specifically,” Bradley told Reuters Health. The specific recommendation may change as more evidence emerges, but this two- to four-hours-per-day guidance is a good starting point, he said.

U.K. office workers spend as much as 75% of their time at work sitting down, the experts said June 1 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.Similarly to prolonged periods of sitting, long periods of standing should be avoided, according to the panel, which included experts from several universities and research institutes in the U.K., U.S. and Australia.

Employers may help their employees achieve the two to four hours of standing or light activity by changing how and when people can take breaks that involve standing and movement, or by adopting desk designs and technologies that allow people to perform their work more easily in a standing position, the authors write.”There is good evidence now that too much sitting is associated with generally poorer health outcomes in the long run, including poor bone health, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain cancers,” said Dr. Sebastien Chastin of Glasgow Caledonian University in the U.K.

Sitting seems to be one of the factors contributing to chronic disease, Chastin, who was not part of the new statement, told Reuters Health by email.

“For the last 20 to 30 years the emphasis has been to engage in more ‘purposeful’ exercise,” said Paddy Dempsey of the physical activity laboratory at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia.”Exercise is great for health and we will all continue to advocate for it, but the sad reality is that it hasn’t gotten us all that far at the population level as many are still not engaging in purposeful exercise, and are now sitting increasingly more,” said Dempsey, who was not part of the new statement. Breaks in sedentary time should be an additional measure on top of purposeful exercise, he said by email.

“Research suggests that individuals who are not gaining the benefits of a physically active lifestyle may at least mitigate some of the health hazards associated with physical inactivity by standing more during the day,” said Dr. Lee Smith of the Health Behavior Research Center at University College London. He was also not part of the new statement. “Based on the evidence we have to date, the approximation of two hours increasing to at least four seems reasonable enough,” Dempsey told Reuters Health. We may not be able to pin down the optimal standing time for health effects yet, but these suggested figures seem to be about right, and achievable, Chastin said.

Some companies have already started to address the sitting problem, while others have yet to begin, and the situation can vary greatly by country, Bradley said. A similar Get America Standing campaign launches this week.

Education and public campaigns like these may lead to behavior change, but “it’s going to take us 20 years to get where we need to be,” he said. That’s going to require a cultural shift toward understanding and accepting standing phone calls, walking meetings and going over to a colleague’s desk to talk instead of emailing them, Bradley said.

Fifteen surgeons and 17 hospitals nationwide along with more than a dozen other people, are accused of participating in a counterfeit spinal-hardware ring that resulted in patients receiving non-FDA approved implants, according to a civil complaint and story reported by America Tonight. The document, which was filed in February in California on behalf of dozens of insurance companies, was unsealed Thursday and details a massive alleged health care fraud scheme and conspiracy involving the use and billing of fake surgical hardware to hospitals and doctors across the country.

According to the filing, owners and operators of California-based Spinal Solutions, LLC, manufactured faked spinal implants and “insidiously co-mingled fake implantable hardware with genuine” parts. The fake parts were then allegedly implanted in patients at hospitals in California, Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin and Nevada, according to the complaint. Production of the counterfeit rods and cages allegedly began in 2007 at a machine and tool shop in Temecula, California, according to the complaint. It’s alleged the defendants – doctors, hospitals and distributors – began a five-year relationship with Spinal Solutions to market the fake parts.

It’s alleged that kickbacks were paid to surgeons who would then use the fake products in surgeries. According to the complaint, Maryland surgeon Dr. Randy Davis entered into a “sham agreement” with Spinal Solutions and was paid $458,962 in kickbacks in exchange for getting the non-FDA approved products used in surgeries at the University of Maryland’s Baltimore Washington Medical Center. More than $1 million in sales were made to Baltimore Washington Medical Center, according to the filing, although it’s unclear over what period of time.

Calls to Davis were not returned. Kevin Cservek, a spokesperson for Baltimore Washington Medical Center said they have not heard about the complaint and couldn’t comment.

Nevada surgeons Jaswinder Grover and Patrick McNulty are accused of taking kickbacks in return for implanting the fake parts into unsuspecting patients at the Nevada Orthopedic and Spine Center. Calls to them were not returned.

Like several other doctors, Wisconsin-based surgeon Cully White is accused of entering into a “sham design and development agreement” with Spinal Solutions, which would then allegedly pay the surgeon a kickback in return of using the products. White, who has completed a prison sentence on an unrelated health care fraud conviction, allegedly implanted the hardware into unsuspecting patients at Milwaukee’s St. Francis Hospital and Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, before losing his medical license.

Several California surgeons are named in the complaint: Jack Akmakjian, Khalid Ahmed, Darren Bergey, Edward Kolpin, John Joseph Regan, Mitchell Cohen, Justin Paquette, Roger Shortz and Gurvinder Uppal. Dr. Paul McDonough of Texas is also a defendant. Calls to them have not been returned.

Surgeons named in the suit are also accused accepting cash, free airplane rides, meals, vacations and other forms of “entertainment” in exchange for referring patients to certain hospitals where they would get the fake parts implanted. Those hospitals are also defendants in the complaint.

Diagnostic facilities are accused of also taking kickbacks in return for false reports justifying the need for surgeries. The complaint does not name any facility.

Hospitals allegedly “turned a blind eye” to the surgeon, the vendor and products in order to submit false and misleading billings to insurance companies. Those named are located in Nevada, California, Texas, Wisconsin and Maryland.

The lawsuit was not a shock to California spinal surgeon Scott Lederhaus, who, as president of the Association for Medical Ethics, has been a watchdog regarding spinal surgeries. “It doesn’t surprise me. This has got to end,” Lederhaus said. “The spine industry is corrupt and it needs a washing from top to bottom.”

The industry has seen significant growth in sales, going from $250 million in 1994 to $7 billion in 2009, according to Orthopedic Network News, an industry newsletter. And there’s big money in the spinal hardware. In a separate whistleblower lawsuit filed against Spinal Solutions, documents show big markups in its spinal hardware. Six Spinal Solution screw caps cost $2,850 but sold to a hospital for $17,370, which then turned around and charged an insurance carrier $49,260. The chance to break the rules and tap into this lucrative industry can be tempting, Lederhaus said, adding that he thinks more than just a lawsuit is needed to fight that temptation. “I think they should all lose their licenses and go to jail and pay heavy fines,” Lederhaus said.