Thirty attorneys representing both defendants and injured workers have requested that the Calif. Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee hold a hearing to discuss the problems with the Electronic Adjudication Management System (EAMS). Their letter dated June 22, 2009, is set forth below:

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June 22, 2009

Honorable Mark DeSaulnier, Chair
Honorable Mark Wyland, Vice Chair
Honorable Denise Ducheny
Honorable Dennis Hollingsworth
Honorable Mark Leno
Honorable Leland Yee

   RE:   Electronic Adjudication Management System
            Workers' Compensation Appeals Board
            Request for hearing

Dear Senator DeSaulnier and Members of the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee:

We are attorneys representing both defendants and injured workers before the Workers' Compensation Appeals  Board.  The purpose of this letter is to apprise you of severe problems with the Electronic Adjudication Management System (EAMS) currently being implemented by the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) throughout the State.

BACKGROUND

According to the DIR website, approximately 36,000,000 pages of case-related documents are submitted to DWC district offices annually.  Approximately three years ago, DIR commenced an effort to create a paperless court system for litigated workers’ compensation cases.   DIR describes the goals of EAMS as follows:

The goals of EAMS are to better serve injured workers and employers by eliminating redundancy, creating efficiency in the system and making the system more accessible to users, while preserving confidentiality. EAMS will reduce environmental and physical stress associated with maintaining paper files and help guide policy decisions to better distribute resources.

The goals of this new system are laudable.  Unfortunately, as designed, EAMS cannot achieve these goals.  In fact, EAMS has led to more redundancy, less efficiency, more delays and has substantially increased the amount of paper generated per case.

PROBLEMS WITH EAMS

Insufficient Licenses

EAMS was conceived as a system that would allow external users (as well as those within the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board) to access case information via DIR’s website.  Users were to have been able to file documents with the WCAB, request action regarding pending litigation, submit trial exhibits, and obtain information regarding case status.  However, there are an insufficient number of licenses.  Therefore, the system does not allow enough external users to access the system such that the system could function for external users.

As a result, we now have two systems in place, the old paper-based system for the external users, and the internal system being utilized by the WCAB district offices.  This is causing massive confusion and a tremendous amount of additional work at substantial additional cost.

Attached is a recent article from Work Comp Central which confirms that there are 200 participants statewide currently filing documents electronically.  Moreover, the cost to obtain 9,000 to 29,000 additional licenses from the software provider, and to purchase the necessary servers to handle the increased data, would be between $30 million and $60 million.  That would be in addition to the already budgeted $51 million.

Increased Delays

The statewide District Offices are currently laboring under a system that requires court staff to manually scan hundreds of thousands of pages of special Optical Character Recognition (OCR) forms required by EAMS.  The workload for the district offices staff has more than doubled as a result of the need to manually scan these submitted documents.

The delays as a result of the backlog in scanning submitted documents cannot be overstated.  There are well over two thousand Applications for Adjudication of Claim¹ submitted under EAMS, but as yet unscanned, at one Northern California District Office alone.   If that number reflects the status of submissions at District Offices throughout the state, we estimate the number of cases for which no action can be taken to be in the tens of thousands.  The delay in opening cases results in medical treatment and benefits being denied to injured workers.

For those older cases that have a previously assigned case number, the backlog in scanning has resulted in lengthy delays in setting hearings and trials.  These delays operate against the interests of both employers (who may, for instance, be paying temporary disability benefits pursuant to an order and would like a hearing to determine whether they must continue to pay such benefits) and injured workers.  The inability to access the WCAB for needed determinations substantially increases the cost of the workers’ compensation system overall.

EAMS Requires More Paper Than The Old System

The new EAMS OCR forms are longer than the old forms were and are poorly designed for their intended use.  This has led to far more paper being generated per case than under the old system.  In addition, parties are required to re-file documents and pleadings when cases are set for trial as there is no way to examine what it is in the Board's file.

REQUEST FOR ACTION

This letter is not meant to be an exhaustive list of the problems EAMS has caused for California's beleaguered workers' compensation system.  As the attached article makes clear, DIR has no plans to purchase a sufficient number of licenses such that EAMS could be utilized as originally intended.  We request you conduct hearings and inquire into how the system was initiated with insufficient licenses, when the myriad problems with the system are going to be remedied and, if so, at what cost.

If the problems with EAMS cannot be effectively - and timely - fixed, we would support scrapping EAMS and going back to the old system as it was more efficient, user friendly, and environmentally sensitive than EAMS.

Thank you for your courtesy and attention to this pressing issue.  We would be happy to provide you with any follow up information you may need.

Very truly yours,

The following are signatories to this letter by either personal or email consent:

Isaac Fluss, Esq.                                  Mark Vickness, Esq.
Fluss & Williams                                   The Russo Law Firm
Santa Rosa, CA                                    Oakland, CA

Mary Williams, Esq.                              James Harvey, Esq.
Fluss & Williams                                   Santa Maria, CA
Santa Rosa, CA

Michael Gerson, Esq.                            Bruce Gelber, Esq.
Boxer & Gerson                                    Fensten & Gelber
Oakland, CA                                         Los Angeles, CA

Ralph Mann, Esq.                                 Tracy Sturtevant, Esq.
Boxer & Gerson                                    Gray & Prouty
Oakland, CA                                         San Bruno, CA

Brett Graham, Esq.                               Mark Weinberger, Esq.
Law Offices of Nava & Graham               Santa Rosa, CA
Montebello, CA

Art Johnson, Esq.                                 Thomas Plumb, Esq.
Butts & Johnson                                   Sacramento, CA
San Jose, CA

Betty Bortin, Esq.                                 Melissa Brown, Esq.
Law Office of Betty Bortin                      Farrell, Fraulob & Brown
San Francisco, CA                               Sacramento, CA

Don Fraulob, Esq.                                 David Belden, Esq.
Farrell, Fraulob & Brown                        Farrell, Fraulob & Brown
Sacramento, CA                                   Sacramento, CA

Christine Craft, Esq.                              Lou Ann Bassan, Esq.
Farrell, Fraulob & Brown                        Law Offices of Lou Ann Bassan
Sacramento, CA                                   San Francisco, CA

Jeffrey Friedman, Esq.                           Pazit Zohar, Esq.
Law Offices of Jeffrey Friedman              San Francisco, CA
Berkeley, CA

Tim Timmons, Esq.                               Ricardo DeAlba, Esq.
Law Offices of Timothy Timmons            San Bruno, CA
Concord, CA

Donna Rivers, Esq.                                Michael Holmes, Esq.
Larson, Vandersloot & Rivers                  Luna & Levering
Richmond, CA                                       Salinas, CA

Ronald R. Neach, Esq.                           Joanne Helvig, Esq.
Law Offices of Ronald R. Neach               Law Offices of John Hill
Concord, CA                                          Oakland, CA

R. Lynn Smith, Esq.                               Robert G. Burton, Esq.
Valerian, Patterson, Stratman &              Kurlander & Burton
Love                                                      San Francisco, CA
Alameda, CA

Martin Beaver, Esq.                                Lon Peek, Esq.
Law Offices of Martin J. Beaver                Law Offices of Lon E. Peek, III
Orangevale, CA                                      Fountain Valley, CA

cc:
Rodger Dillon, Chief Consultant
Mark Rakich, Chief Consultant, Assembly Insurance Committee
Honorable Dave Jones

¹ these are the documents used by the WCAB to open a file and assign a case number, which is required for the processing of any subsequent action.