Tag: 2020 News

The Division of Workers’ Compensation has posted an order dated May 7, 2020, adjusting the Physician and Non-Physician Practitioner Services section of the Official Medical Fee Schedule (OMFS) to conform to additional Medicare fee schedule changes pursuant to Labor Code section 5307.1. The order includes technical updates and provisions to support expanded access to telehealth services.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued an Interim Final Rule to adopt additional temporary modifications to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule to improve access to medical care through telehealth during the public health emergency.

The Interim Final Rule adopts an expanded list of medical services (“Covered Telehealth Services for PHE for the COVID-19 pandemic effective March 1 2020-updated April 30 2020“) that may be billed for telehealth using video and audio technology, and includes identification of services that could be provided through audio-only where medically appropriate. DWC has retroactively adopted the revised telehealth list for services rendered on or after March 1, 2020, and has also adopted a retroactive revision to the Place of Service Code, which may result in an increase in fees for telehealth services if the physician provides the service in a “non-facility” setting.

The CMS Interim Final Rule temporarily increases fees for three telephone evaluation and management codes (CPT codes 99441, 99442, 99443) retroactive to March 1, 2020 to provide parity between these codes and evaluation and management codes for services rendered in person or by audio/video telehealth. DWC has adopted the retroactive increases for these three codes, which will support the provision of medical care for injured workers and further the goal of maintaining social distancing.

The Administrative Director order also adopts the CMS revised 2020 Relative Value Unit file, “RVU20B (Updated 05/01/2020),” which replaces the initial quarter two RVU20B file. The revised file is substantially identical to the original file. The significant change for workers’ compensation services is the increase of the relative values for CPT codes 99441 through 99443 discussed above.

Workers’ compensation claims administrators should adjust payment systems in light of the retroactive changes, and set up a process to reevaluate claims for services rendered on or after March 1, 2020 that may have additional payment due so that the balance owing is remitted to the provider. If a provider believes that the revised fee schedule would result in an increased payment for services rendered, they may submit a corrected bill or request for second review as appropriate.

The order adopting the updated Physician and Non-Physician Practitioner fee schedule can be found on the DWC fee schedule web page.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is restarting the company’s California factory in defiance of local government efforts to contain the coronavirus. In a tweet Monday, Musk practically dared authorities to arrest him, writing that he would be on the assembly line and if anyone is taken into custody, it should be him.

State law allows a fine of up to $1,000 a day or up to 90 days in jail for operating in violation of health orders. The plant in Fremont, a city of more than 230,000 people south of San Francisco, had been closed since March 23.

KCRA reports that early Monday, the parking lot was nearly full at the massive factory, which employs 10,000 workers, and semis were driving off loaded with vehicles that may have been produced before the shutdown.

The restart defied orders from the Alameda County Public Health Department, which has deemed the factory a nonessential business that can’t open under virus restrictions. The department said Monday it warned the company was operating in violation of the county health order, and hoped Tesla will “comply without further enforcement measures” until the county approves a site-specific plan required by the state.

The department said it expects Tesla to submit such a plan by 5 p.m. Monday. “We look forward to reviewing Tesla’s plan and coming to agreement on protocol and a timeline to reopen safely,” the statement read.

No agency appeared ready to enforce the order against Tesla. County Sheriff Sgt. Ray Kelly said any enforcement would come from Fremont police. Geneva Bosques, Fremont police spokeswoman, said officers would take action at the direction of the county health officer.

County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, who represents Fremont, said he’s been working on the issue for weeks trying to find a way for Tesla to reopen in a way that satisfies the health officer. He said officials were moving toward allowing Tesla to restart May 18, but he suspects Musk wanted to restart stamping operations to make body parts needed to resume assembling electric vehicles.

Tesla planned to maintain worker safety, including the wearing of gloves and masks and social distancing. Haggerty said the company initially pushed back on checking employee temperatures before boarding a company bus to get to work. But Tesla relented, he said, and agreed to check workers.

“I’m seeing emails going back and forth between the plant and our public health department so I’m encouraged by that, and that’s what I mean by cooler heads,” he said. “There’s a lot of people whose lives depend on that plant opening safely.”

The restart came two days after Tesla sued the county health department seeking to overturn its order, and Musk threatened to move Tesla’s manufacturing operations and headquarters from the state.

“Frankly, this is the final straw,” Musk wrote in a now-deleted Saturday tweet. “Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately.”

A scientific breakthrough has given a man in Ohio the chance to reclaim a major part of his life after a devastating injury.

Ian Burkhart suffered a severe spinal cord injury in 2010 while on vacation from Ohio University. He dove into a wave and struck an unseen sandbar that paralyzed him instantly. Since 2014, researchers at the nonprofit, Battelle, and the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have been working on new technologies to help restore the use of Burkhart’s right arm.

In a new report, published in the journal Cell, the researchers have succeeded in connecting neural signals between Burkhart’s brain and arm. The breakthrough system is able to harness signals that are usually too small to perceive, enhances them, and sends them to the patient.

“We’re taking subperceptual touch events and boosting them into conscious perception,” Battelle research scientist Patrick Ganzer said in a statement. “It was a big eureka moment when we first restored the participant’s sense of touch.”

The brain-computer interface (BCI) system implants a small computer chip in the brain and places a series of electrodes on the patient’s skin. After the connection is made to Burkhart’s arm, wires route the movement signals from his brain straight to the muscles – avoiding the damage caused by the 28-year-old’s spinal injury.

Thanks to the BCI, researchers say Burkhart has enough control over his arm now to lift a cup, swipe a credit card, or even play video games like Guitar Hero. Ganzer says that patients who have suffered a “clinically complete” spinal cord injury still have a few remnants of nerve fiber that survive the injury. The BCI helps the body boost the signals from those remaining fibers and gets the to brain respond to them.

The Ohio researchers add that their system works very much like how a cell phone or video game controller lets the user know something is going on. Using “haptic feedback,” a vibration or other force a machine produces to get a user’s attention, the BCI helps the touch signals coming from the patient’s skin to reach the brain as understandable haptic feedback.

The success with Ian Burkhart have also led to several improvements in the BCI system. The researchers say the 28-year-old has been able to detect an object by touch alone, without having to see it. He’s also been able to experience movement and the sense of touch at the same time and can sense how much pressure to apply to an object he’s holding – depending on if it’s light or heavy.

“It has been amazing to see the possibilities of sensory information coming from a device that was originally created to only allow me to control my hand in a one-way direction,” Burkhart explained.

The scientists are now hoping to design a BCI that can be worn like a sleeve at home and can be easily taken on or off.

The state of California is suing Uber and Lyft for classifying their drivers as contractors instead of employees. The lawsuit is the first major test of a new state law intended to give gig workers more labor protections, including access to employer-sponsored health insurance.

“Uber and Lyft both claim that their drivers aren’t engaged in the company’s core mission and therefore qualify for benefits,” said Xavier Becerra, the state’s attorney general, at a press conference on Tuesday. “If drivers in California contract the coronavirus or if they lose their job as a result, guess what? They’re the ones that go missing. They’re the ones that don’t know what to do next. They’re the ones who have to worry about how they’ll pay their bills.”

Becerra said the companies are also harming taxpayers by classifying drivers as contractors rather than employees. The companies do not pay “hundreds of millions of dollars in social safety net obligations,” or state payroll taxes, he said.

The state is seeking penalties that it estimates could reach “hundreds of millions of dollars.” It also wants the companies to pay restitution to hundreds of thousands of drivers in California.

The lawsuit escalates an ongoing battle over how companies in the so-called gig economy treat the workers who make their services possible. The coronavirus pandemic has put gig workers in the spotlight and exacerbated the precariousness of their jobs.

Classifying drivers as contractors saves Uber and Lyft a lot of money because they do not provide benefits like health coverage to contractors, or pay into state unemployment insurance systems. The companies say that business model benefits drivers by giving them the flexibility to work when they want.

Becerra was flanked at the press conference by prosecutors from Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, which have joined the lawsuit.

The California prosecutors contend that the companies are flouting the rules – specifically, Assembly Bill 5, a law passed last year that makes it harder for companies to say workers are not employees.

“Misclassification means cheating,” said Mike Feuer, Los Angeles City Attorney, at the press conference.

The law represents a significant threat to the apps’ business models, but Uber and Lyft have argued that it does not apply to them. Along with food delivery app DoorDash, the companies have pledged to spend $90 million on a ballot initiative seeking to overturn AB5.

On Tuesday, Uber said it would fight the lawsuit. “At a time when California’s economy is in crisis with four million people out of work, we need to make it easier, not harder, for people to quickly start earning,” the company said. “We will contest this action in court, while at the same time pushing to raise the standard of independent work for drivers in California, including with guaranteed minimum earnings and new benefits.”

Lyft struck a less combative tone in a statement it released Tuesday. It said: “We are looking forward to working with the Attorney General and mayors across the state to bring all the benefits of California’s innovation economy to as many workers as possible, especially during this time when the creation of good jobs with access to affordable healthcare and other benefits is more important than ever.”

A federal judge on May 4 granted 3M, the maker of N95 masks, an injunction against a New Jersey-based company accused of using 3M’s trademarks and deliberately inflating the price of the face masks.

3M had filed legal action April 10 in federal court in New York City against Performance Supply LLC, alleging price gouging and deceptive trade practices in the sales of N95 respirators used in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a news release.

According to 3M, Performance Supply LLC offered to sell $45 million in N95 masks to New York City officials at prices 500-600% over 3M’s list price.

U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska ordered Performance Supply LLC to cease using 3M trademarks, stating in her order that the “defendant is trading off the widespread commercial recognition and goodwill of the 3M Marks and 3M Slogan in connection with offering to sell products that 3M is widely known for manufacturing and selling, namely, N95 respirators.”

“Accordingly, it is no surprise that [Performance Supply LLC] confused New York City procurement officials into believing that [Performance Supply LLC] was an authorized vendor of 3M-brand N95 respirators,” the judge added in her order.

The judge’s order marks the first win for 3M in a series of price-gouging lawsuits against companies in Florida, California, Indiana and Wisconsin and elsewhere. There are about ten such cases now pending across the country.

3M accused a company in a California federal lawsuit of infringing its 3M-branded N95 masks by reselling the protective equipment at drastically increased prices. 3M Co. claims Utah-based Rx2Live LLC tried to sell millions of the masks to Community Medical Centers Inc. in Fresno, California, at a “grossly inflated” price that was about four to five times greater than the list price, according to the complaint.

The company doesn’t claim Rx2Live was trying to sell counterfeit versions of 3M’s masks, but was instead falsely asserting that it was a distributor of 3M products – making CMC believe the mask prices were authorized by 3M, according to the lawsuit.

In three complaints filed in Florida and a fourth in Indiana, the industrial giant accused a series of small entities of falsely claiming to be affiliated with 3M in order to sell masks to desperate government agencies at jacked-up prices.

In one of the cases, 3M accused an Indiana company of falsely claiming to work directly with 3M and having a whopping 5 billion masks to sell at more than double their shelf price.

In one of the new cases, 3M accused a Georgia entity called 1 Ignite Capital LLC of using misleading language in an attempt to sell 10 million masks to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management at more than four and a half times their actual price.

In another case, 3M accused a company called Zenger LLC and owner Zachary Puznak of even more egregious behavior. Puznak allegedly offered to sell as many as 5 billion N95 masks to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation by claiming to be in direct contact with “executives from 3M.” When pressed for verification, he allegedly accused IEDC of “paranoid irrationality.”

“3M does not – and will not – tolerate price gouging, fraud, deception, or other activities that unlawfully exploit the demand for critical 3M products during a pandemic,” said Denise Rutherford, 3M’s senior vice president, corporate affairs, in a press release.

“3M will not stop here. We continue to work with federal and state law enforcement authorities, and around the world, to investigate and track down those who are illegally taking advantage of this situation for their own gain.”