A federal workplace safety investigation found that a 34-year-old worker’s fatal fall might have been prevented had the operator of a Pauma Valley zip-line attraction implemented required safety measures.

ABC 10 News of San Diego reported that Joaquin Romero, 34, of Banning, Calif., died of multiple blunt force trauma injuries after he fell from a receiving platform of a zip line while trying to help a rider. The incident occurred at the Zip Zoom Zipline located on the La Jolla Indian Reservation, according to the La Jolla Band Of Luiseno Indians.

According to Fox 5, a witness said Romero was helping a woman get hooked on the platform when she started sliding out on the line. He couldn’t stop her and grabbed onto her harness, which caused them both to slide out about a hundred feet above the ground, according to the witness.

The friend said Romero feared the woman could fall because of the weight, so he made a heroic decision to let go. According to the witness, the woman was not injured.

Cal Fire crews hoisted Romero up in a rescue basket, and he was airlifted to Sharp Memorial Hospital. The county medical examiner said Romero arrived without a pulse. After admission to the hospital, a poor prognosis was given by medical staff and Romero’s family decided to place him on comfort care measures until he was pronounced dead, the ME added.

The zip line course had billed itself as the longest of its kind in Southern California, with lines running across canyons, valleys, treetops and the San Luis Rey River. The three zipline courses at the attraction range from 300 to 2,700 feet in length and reach speeds up to 55 miles per hour. It opened in 2015.

A U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation inspectors found La Jolla Zip Zoom Ziplines failed to install a guardrail, safety net or personal fall arrest system. The company also did not train employees on fall hazards and how to recognize them, as required. Additionally, OSHA determined that the company failed to assess the workplace to determine the presence of hazards and did not report a work-related hospitalization within 24 hours.

OSHA cited the company for four serious safety violations and proposed $24,861 in penalties. La Jolla Zip Zoom Ziplines is also accused of failing to train employees about fall hazards and failing to assess the workplace for hazards.

OSHA Area Director Derek Engard said,”La Jolla Zip Zoom Ziplines failed to meet their obligation to protect their employees,” OSHA Area Director Derek Engard in San Diego. “If they had simply provided the proper protective equipment, this senseless tragedy could have been prevented.”

The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

CorVel Corporation presented its Critical Incident Stress Debriefing program, highlighting positive outcomes with the City of Beverly Hills, at the annual Public Agency Risk Management Association (PARMA) meeting on March 1, 2022, in Anaheim, California.

Critical incident stress debriefing has been around for many years. However, it has recently re-emerged as a tool for employers facing several challenges in our current climate.

Originally designed for responders to traumatic events, critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) is a structured, brief intervention provided in a small group setting immediately following a crisis. It’s designed to help people process the event to minimize symptoms of traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. Critical incident debriefing typically consists of seven stages, and altogether, it lasts approximately three hours or less.

“Critical incident” is another term for a traumatic event. It includes any occurrence faced by public safety responders, emergency workers, and related personnel that causes distress and disruption to typical psychological or physiological functioning. Critical incidents often involve death or extreme threats to safety, life, and well-being.

It was developed in 1974 by Dr. Jeffrey Mitchell, a former firefighter and paramedic, as one component of a broader critical incident stress management (CISM) program.

During the presentation, Tyla A. DiMaria, RN, Case Management Manager for CorVel, discussed the company’s patient-centered approach that helps employees who have witnessed a catastrophic or traumatic event process the situation, work through the hurdles and develop coping mechanisms to return to work as quickly as possible.

“These past two years have put a spotlight on mental health, as people have been dealing with the stresses of illness, death, civil unrest, isolation and so many other difficult situations,” DiMaria said. “We’ve seen a significant increase in depression, anxiety, crippling fear and other mental health issues, especially for essential workers, and these challenges must be addressed and not ignored.”

Last year, CorVel’s program was expanded to address COVID-19 traumatic stress – a syndrome developing due to the significant mental health challenges associated with the pandemic.

During the presentation, DiMaria outlined how the City of Beverly Hills partnered with CorVel to implement a critical incident and COVID-19 traumatic stress debriefing program for city employees, improving return to work and positively impacting overall costs and outcomes.

“We are very proud of our expanded Critical Incident Stress Debriefing program, which places emphasis on the injured worker and their overall wellbeing,” said Karen Thomas, Vice President, Clinical Solutions at CorVel.

“At CorVel, we take a patient-centered approach to claims management to ensure that the injured worker feels supported throughout the process, regardless of the type of illness or injury. By taking a proactive approach to mental health, we can improve outcomes and reduce costs for customers while increasing satisfaction and care for injured workers.”

A new 253 page report describes work undertaken by the RAND Corporation for the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation (CHSWC) in the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR).  The goal of this study is three-fold:

(1) evaluate the overall impacts of COVID- 19 claims on California’s workers’ compensation system,
(2) evaluate the overall impacts of COVID-19 claims on California’s workers’ compensation indemnity benefits, medical benefits, and death benefits, including differences in the impacts across differing occupational groups, and
(3) assess the overall and cost impacts of the frontline worker and outbreak presumptions created by Senate Bill (SB) 1159 on California workers’ compensation system.

Senate Bill 1159, which was signed into law on September 17, codified this temporary presumption and introduced distinct presumptions for two groups of workers who fell ill with COVID-19 on July 6, 2020 or later:

– – Labor Code section 3212.87 covers specified health-care workers and workers in specified health care facilities, active firefighters, and peace officers primarily engaged in active law enforcement. We refer to this presumption as the frontline presumption.
– – Labor Code section 3212.88 covers workers not covered by the frontline presumption who tested positive for COVID-19 while working outside the home during an outbreak period at their job site. We refer to this presumption as the outbreak presumption.

These presumptions, which remain in effect until January 1, 2023, apply to workers meeting these criteria who test positive for COVID-19 using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.

RAND conducted a mixed-methods study analyzing claims outcomes overall and by industry and occupation from the Workers’ Compensation Information System (WCIS) between January 2020 and June 2021.COVID-19 accounted for over 20 percent of claims in June and July of 2020 and peaked at 55 percent of claims in December 2020. Applicants filed a total of 82,000 claims filed for December 2020 injury dates. In comparison, in the decade before the pandemic (2010 to 2019), there had never been more than 68,000 claims filed in a single month.

During the first wave of the pandemic, the volume of non-COVID-19 claims dropped sharply following the statewide stay-at-home order, and so total claim volumes dropped early in the pandemic and were 25 percent lower than the volume typical before the pandemic during the temporary presumption period. Total claim volumes in most months since July 202 have remained below pre-pandemic levels.

COVID-19 claims are denied much more often than non-COVID-19 claims. Depending on the time period, denial rates on COVID-19 claims across all occupations have ranged from 44 percent for claims filed before any presumptions were in effect, 26 percent during the temporary presumption, and 34 percent after the outbreak and frontline presumptions took effect. Denial rates on non-COVID-19 claims filed at these times were 13 percent, 14 percent, and 10 percent, respectively. Denial rates varied widely across workers covered by different presumptions and, within groups of workers covered by the same presumption, across industries and occupations.

The main factor influencing whether a worker filed a claim was having access to federal and state COVID-19 paid leave. Workers then decided to file a workers’ compensation claim when their need for time off exceeded the time available from these other federal and state paid leave programs. Workers were able to access medical care for COVID-19 without using workers’ compensation, suggesting that workers’ compensation medical care benefits for COVID-19 were not critical to helping most workers receive needed care.

Overall, its study uncovered several challenges with the functioning of the workers’ compensation system during the pandemic. For employers, these challenges primarily related to handling a large, fluctuating volume of claims within shortened claim administration timeframes for making an initial claim decision.

For workers, confusion around filing a COVID-19 claim presented challenges, including questions about what occupations were covered and qualified for workers’ compensation under the presumption and whether a positive COVID-19 test was needed. In the face of these challenges, we consider how the specific aspects of the presumptions identified by SB 1159 impacted workers and employers within the workers’ compensation system.

Remote appearances have saved lawyers and witnesses travel time, relieved court congestion, while offering clients the ability to watch the proceedings from home. With mask mandates in place, remote appearances allow an opportunity for many to evaluate facial expressions and hear clearly words that may otherwise be muffled.

However attorneys who practice worker’s compensation law in California received notification that the WCAB will be reopening for Trials, Lien Trials and Expedited Hearings beginning Monday, March 21. Conferences and walk throughs will continue to be remote only. The DWC Newsline will be released within the next few days.

And state courts have started to move in the same direction. After Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted most of the state’s indoor masking requirements Feb. 15, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye issued an order last week withdrawing effective April 30, several court emergency orders she imposed in March 2020.

One order allows judges in felony criminal cases to hold a preliminary hearing 30 days after a defendant is charged, instead of the previous 10-day deadline. At a preliminary hearing, the judge decides whether prosecutors have presented enough evidence to proceed with their case.  Another order extended by 60 days the previous deadlines for starting trials in civil cases.

Cantil-Sakauye also revoked orders that gave local courts broad authority to conduct proceedings remotely, and that allowed courts to adopt pandemic-related rules without 45 days of public comment, as previously required.

Citing Newsom’s orders, the chief justice said, “these events mark an important and hopeful change as the residents and government of our state transition to a semblance of pre-COVID-19 California”

In a follow-up action, the state Judicial Council, chaired by Cantil-Sakauye, said it would meet Friday to consider repealing the remaining emergency court rules as of June 30.

A few weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Judicial Council adopted emergency rule 3, which became effective on April 6, 2020. This emergency rule authorized courts to hold proceedings remotely via videoconference or by phone. The council has now said it would consider sponsoring legislation that would preserve, by state law rather than regulations, the current system authorizing remote appearances.

Cantil-Sakauye’s order on Thursday does not mean the end of remote hearings in state courts other than the WCAB. The state’s legislature in September passed a law that will allow courts to hold civil proceedings remotely until at least July 2023.

Senate Bill 241 enacted the new Code of Civil Procedure section 367.75, which will be effective from January 1, 2022 through July 1, 2023, authorizes at least some litigants, witnesses, judges, lawyers and even jurors to voluntarily appear in a case by video.

The judiciary recently upgraded 500 courtrooms to allow for video appearances. Los Angeles County Superior Court alone conducts about 5,000 remote proceedings a day, according to the Judicial Council.

At a May legislative hearing, Alameda County Superior Court Presiding Judge Tara Desautels raved about remote appearances and trials, saying “our jurors love it.”

But interpreters and court reporters told a different story, one of video participants being accidentally shut out of hearings, sketchy technology dropping participants and one litigant’s image going dark after his cellphone minutes ran out.

Employee groups thus negotiated a July 2023 sunset clause added to C.C.P. 367.75, meaning that remote civil proceedings will end 18 months after the bill takes effect unless lawmakers agree to extend its provisions.

According to a report in the Modesto Bee, the battle against unemployment insurance scams – fraud that’s meant an estimated $20 billion in suspect payments in California – got powerful new tools from President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address.

“We’re going after the criminals who stole billions in relief money meant for small business and millions of Americans. And tonight, I’m announcing that the Justice Department will soon name a chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud.,” the president said. Members of Congress applauded the idea.

Nancy Farias, director of California’s Employment Development Department, enthusiastically welcomed the news. EDD manages the state’s unemployment program.

“California took aggressive and unprecedented action to block fraudsters who scammed the emergency federal benefit programs,” she told The Sacramento Bee. “The president’s move to boost fraud fighting will help states continue to hold criminals accountable.”

A White House fact sheet explained how the already-existing Justice Fraud Enforcement Task Force would name the chief prosecutor. The prosecutor would focus on “the most egregious forms of pandemic fraud.”

The new appointee would “lead teams of specialized prosecutors and agents focusing on major targets of pandemic fraud, such as those committing large-scale identity theft, including foreign-based actors.”

These strike force teams, it said, would use analytics to “to connect the dots on identity theft and other complex fraud schemes committed across state lines or transnationally, as well as investigate major cases of criminal fraud in programs like the Paycheck Protection Program and Unemployment Insurance.”

The White House plan will need Congress to approve more funds and increase penalties for criminals who commit pandemic-related fraud. Biden also pledged an executive order to help prevent identity theft in public benefit programs.

The White House offered no details, saying the order would aim to “prevent and detect identity theft involving public benefits, while protecting privacy and civil liberties and preventing bias that results in disparate outcomes.”

In California, a team of state and local prosecutors has been working with the Justice Department and others to investigate unemployment insurance fraud. They’ve been eyeing suspected organized crime efforts in addition to individuals who are simply trying to deceive the government.