Daniel Clampitt, 41, of Denair, was arraigned on four felony counts including insurance fraud, grand theft and perjury for allegedly claiming to be too injured to work and simultaneously collecting $94,788 in workers’ compensation benefits while also working for another employer.

Clampitt injured his knee while on duty as a firefighter for the City of Hollister.

Due to his injury, Clampitt could not perform his firefighter duties and received wage loss benefits from June 2016 to June 2018.

Surveillance video was obtained in January 2017 of Clampitt working at another company while he was still collecting workers’ compensation benefits from the City of Hollister.

A Department of Insurance investigation further revealed that for nine months Clampitt continued to collect wage loss benefits while receiving a paycheck from a new employer. Clampitt did not report this employment and income to the City or the insurance company handling his claim.

During a deposition, Clampitt claimed he had worked as an independent contractor for the second employer before his injury and denied applying for employment after the date of his injury, but records from the second employer show that Clampitt started working for them in October 2016, four months after his June 2016 injury.

Clampitt was arraigned on February 2, 2021. The San Benito County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting this case.

A new California Workers’ Compensation Institute study finds that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) now account for more than a third of all drugs dispensed to injured workers in California, triple the proportion noted for opioids.

The study also reveals that although most NSAIDs that are used are inexpensive, and utilization has been flat since the state’s evidence-based prescription drug formulary took effect in 2018, NSAIDs’ share of the total drug spend has soared from 14.2% to 23.5%, largely driven by increased payments for two low-volume, high-priced drugs that are exempt from prospective utilization review (UR) and that lack price controls.

The CWCI analysis of changes in the distribution of California workers’ compensation prescriptions and prescription payments over the past decade uses data on 5.85 million prescriptions dispensed to injured workers, resulting in payments totaling $623 million.

The data show that opioids accounted for 11.6% of the prescriptions filled in the first half of 2020, down from 31.0% in 2011 – a relative decline of 62.6% during the study period.

NSAIDs, often used as non-opioid alternatives to treat pain, surpassed opioids as the number one drug group in 2015, and in both 2019 and the first half of 2020 they accounted for more than a third of all prescriptions dispensed to injured workers, twice the proportion noted a decade earlier.

Ranking behind opioids in terms of utilization are anticonvulsants, dermatologicals, and antidepressants, which round out the top 5 drug groups.

Musculoskeletal drugs (muscle relaxants), which were the third most heavily used workers’ comp drug group until the formulary took effect, saw their share of the prescriptions fall sharply beginning in 2018 as under the formulary they are subject to prospective UR, with the exception of special fill or perioperative uses, where the quantity of the drug that can be dispensed is limited.

Total payments for a drug group reflect several factors besides the volume of prescriptions, including allowable fees under the pharmacy fee schedule, average quantities and dosages, mode of delivery, and the availability of generics.

While opioids still rank second in workers’ comp prescription volume, the study found their share of the prescription payments fell from 30.7% in 2011 to 7.0% in the first half of 2020, so they now rank fourth in terms of total drug spend, behind NSAIDs (23.5%), dermatological drugs (14.1%), and anticonvulsants (13.1%).

CWCI has released its study in a Research Update report, “California Workers’ Compensation Prescription Drug Trends.”

A combination of two Eli Lilly antibody drugs cut the risk of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths by 87%, the company announced Wednesday, further upholding dosing already authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.

New data from the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled BLAZE-1 Phase 3 study, demonstrates that bamlanivimab 700 mg and etesevimab 1400 mg together significantly reduced COVID-19 related hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients recently diagnosed with COVID-19.

These results provide additional efficacy and safety data that support the use of the dose recently granted both Emergency Use Authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a positive scientific opinion by the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use.

This new Phase 3 cohort of BLAZE-1 included 769 high-risk patients, aged 12 and older with mild to moderate COVID-19. Bamlanivimab and etesevimab together also demonstrated statistically significant improvements on key secondary endpoints. These results are consistent with those seen in other data sets from BLAZE-1: in the previous Phase 3 cohort, bamlanivimab 2800 mg with etesevimab 2800 mg reduced the risk of hospitalizations and deaths by 70 percent and in the Phase 2 cohort, bamlanivimab alone reduced the risk of hospitalizations and ER visits by approximately 70 percent.  

In this new Phase 3 cohort, there were four deaths total, all of which were deemed related to COVID-19 and all of which occurred in patients taking placebo; no deaths occurred in patients receiving treatment with bamlanivimab and etesevimab together.

“These positive results reinforce our previous findings and support the authorized dose of bamlanivimab 700 mg with etesevimab 1400 mg. These compelling data – in addition to the recent EUA from FDA, the decision from EMA and the recommendation for the therapy in the National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines – give healthcare providers additional information regarding the use of bamlanivimab and etesevimab together as a potentially life-saving treatment to help those most at risk for severe complications of COVID-19,” said Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., Lilly’s chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories.

“The consistent results observed in multiple cohorts of this trial over several months, even as new strains of COVID-19 have emerged, indicate bamlanivimab with etesevimab maintains its effects against a range of variants, particularly those circulating in the U.S.”

Lilly continues to engage with global regulators to make bamlanivimab alone and bamlanivimab and etesevimab together available around the world.

Bamlanivimab alone and bamlanivimab with etesevimab together are authorized under special/emergency pathways, in the context of the pandemic, in the U.S. and the European Union. In addition, bamlanivimab alone is authorized for emergency use in Canada, Panama, Kuwait, the UAE, Israel, Rwanda, Morocco and numerous other countries.

Through Lilly’s work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lilly is providing doses of bamlanivimab free of charge in Rwanda and Morocco.

The Labor Commissioner’s Office has cited Green Messengers Inc. and Amazon.com Services LLC $6.4 million for wage theft violations affecting 718 workers. The Santa Ana-based contractor delivered packages for Amazon.com Services in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.

The Labor Commissioner’s Office opened an investigation in June 2019 after receiving a report of labor law violations indicating Green Messenger workers were experiencing wage theft because they were not paid properly and did not receive correct pay statements.

Green Messengers provided delivery services for Amazon.com.

The investigation found that from April 2018 to January 2020, delivery drivers were scheduled to work 10-hour workdays and required to finish an Amazon delivery route in those 10 hours using Green Messenger or Amazon vehicles.

Due to the number of deliveries, drivers often had to work through their meal and rest breaks, and were not paid properly for the extra time when they had to work 11 or more hours to complete the route. This resulted in frequent minimum wage, overtime, meal break, rest period and split-shift violations.

The citations total $6,454,110, with $5,304,768 owed to the 718 workers. The amount payable to workers includes $3,377,988 in liquidated damages and waiting time penalties, $762,850 in penalty assessments for not providing proper wage statements, $882,735 for split-shift, meal and rest break premiums, and $281,195 for minimum wage, overtime and contract wages.

Green Messengers and Amazon.com Services are responsible for the amounts due to workers according to California’s client-employer liability law, in effect since 2015. The law holds client-employers that obtain labor from a subcontractor liable for their workplace violations.

The citations issued to Green Messengers Inc. include $1,149,342 in civil penalties payable to the state.

The companies have appealed the citations. Under the appeal procedure, the Labor Commissioner’s Office will hold a hearing before a Hearing Officer who will affirm, modify or dismiss the citations.

More than a third of employers have fielded complaints from workers related to COVID-19, and claims involving the Americans with Disabilities Act have jumped since last summer, according to a survey of employers released by Blank Rome LLP on Wednesday.

Blank Rome’s report, based on a February survey of 130 executives, human resources leaders, and in-house and general counsel, said that 34% of respondents had gotten COVID-19-related complaints. That’s up from 21% in July and just 12% in March 2020, the firm said, adding that ADA claims climbed from 4% in July to 8%.

And while the overwhelming majority of the company leaders – 87% – are in favor of taking the COVID-19 vaccine themselves, only 15% said they would require workers to get the jab. Meanwhile, 39% of respondents said they would not require employees to be vaccinated, and the rest were undecided.

When it comes to asking workers if they have been vaccinated, 41% answered that they plan to do so, though half remained unsure.

When it comes to the potentially risky practice of incentivizing the shots, just 10% of respondents said they would, while 34% said they won’t and the rest had yet to decide, according to the report.

“Employers are waiting to see how it all shakes out,” Susan Bickley, a Blank Rome partner and study co-authors aid, adding that employers might be able to encourage workers to get vaccines without instituting mandates or structured incentive programs. “There’s been some conflicting signals.”

While the report showed a steady rise in complaints from employees, it also showed that nearly three-quarters of them don’t fall into traditional categories for employment claims, such as discrimination, retaliation, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration complaints.

Employers have widely adopted medical screening requirements for on-site workers, which could be a driver of the increasing employee complaints, the report said. The majority of the surveyed employers have increased cleaning, social distancing requirements and associated signage. Roughly 97% require masks, a figure that has risen since the summer.

Three-quarters of employers allow their employees to work from home, and only 28% have three-quarters or more of their employees on site. Most continue to refrain from instituting workplace liability waivers.

Additionally, 78% of employers have faced increased requests for paid time off. And around 40% have seen increased requests for time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act or unpaid leave.

But those requests haven’t had too much of an impact on typical time-off eligibility. Around 60% of the employers haven’t made changes to PTO offerings, and just 6% have given parents of young children more PTO.

In April, more than half of employers had avoided taking employee-related cost-cutting measures, such as layoffs and furloughs. That number has dropped as the pandemic has raged on; now, just 31% have managed to evade those outcomes.

“This was the first survey where employers are feeling somewhat hopeful,” Iley said. “We got some positive comments. People are coming out of the difficult decisions.”