Cover: An Evaluation of California’s Permanent Disability Rating System
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An Evaluation of California’s Permanent Disability Rating System

by Robert T. Reville, Seth A. Seabury, Frank W. Neuhauser, John F. Burton, Jr., Michael D. Greenberg

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The process for evaluating the severity of permanent disabilities due to workplace injuries for the purpose of determining workers’ compensation benefits has long been a matter of considerable controversy in California. The state’s disability rating system has been criticized as being inconsistent and prone to promote disputes over the appropriate level of permanent disability benefits. This monograph follows up on an earlier interim briefing on California’s permanent disability rating schedule. Here, the authors provide a systematical evaluation of California’s permanent disability ratings system that was used prior to the state’s 2004 workers’ compensation reform efforts. They examine the extent to which workers with higher disability ratings experience higher earnings losses, and the extent to which workers with similar ratings for impairments in different parts of the body experience similar earnings losses. Among other analyses, they examine the consistency with which physicians evaluate the same injuries. They discuss the implication of these results, for California and potentially for other states, with a focus on interpreting the results in light of the recent reforms.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Chapter Two

    A Framework for Analyzing Permanent Partial Disability

  • Chapter Three

    Evaluating and Rating Permanent Disabilities in California

  • Chapter Four

    Evaluation of Chronic Pain for Workers' Compensation

  • Chapter Five

    Evaluation of Targeting of Disability Ratings in California

  • Chapter Six

    Additional Criteria for Adjusting Disability Ratings

  • Chapter Seven

    Evaluating the Consistency of Disability Ratings in California

  • Chapter Eight

    Conclusions

  • Appendix A

    Operational Approaches to Compensating Permanent Partial Disability

  • Appendix B

    Further Discussion of the Correlation Among Disability Ratings, Benefits, and Earnings Losses

  • Appendix C

    Evaluating the Occupation Adjustments to the Disability Rating Schedule

  • Appendix D

    Further Analysis of Consistency in Disability Ratings

The research described in this report was conducted by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, a unit of the RAND Corporation. This research was sponsored by the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation.

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