The number of inpatient hospitalizations among injured workers in California has declined, in part because of a reduction in the number of implant-eligible spinal surgeries in recent years, according the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

From 2008 to 2014, workers comp inpatient hospitalizations declined 22.8%, according to an updated report, “Inpatient Hospital Utilization in California Workers’ Compensation,” released by CWCI on Thursday.

Payers of workers comp claims saw fewer hospital stays than Medicare, Medi-Cal and private coverage between 2013 and 2014, with the number of inpatient discharges for comp dropping 8.6%, the report states.

It also found that the number of workers comp implant-eligible spinal surgeries declined 8.4% in 2013 and 13.6% in 2014.

The decline “coincided with continued development of evidence-based medicine, utilization review, and independent medical review, fee schedule changes, and the phase out and ultimate repeal of duplicate ‘pass-through’ payments for hardware used in workers compensation spinal surgeries,” CWCI said in a statement.

However, since 2008, implant-eligible spinal surgeries have ranged between 21% and 23.2% of all workers comp inpatient discharges, according to the report. They accounted for 21.2% in 2014, the most recent year included.

The report notes that spinal fusions and back/neck procedures are the highest-volume inpatient hospital discharges among injured workers…

Sacramento, CA – The New York Times reports that after three years of planning, an immigrant rights group is set to start a smartphone app for day laborers, a new digital tool with many uses: Workers will be able to rate employers (think Yelp or Uber), log their hours and wages, take pictures of job sites and help identify, down to the color and make of a car, employers with a history of withholding wages. They will also be able to send instant alerts to other workers. The advocacy group will safeguard the information and work with lawyers to negotiate payment. Not mentioned in the story is the opportunity for workers’ compensation carriers to recover lost premium.

"It will change my life and my colleagues’ lives a good deal," Omar Trinidad, a Mexican immigrant, said in Spanish through an interpreter. Mr. Trinidad is the lead organizer who helped develop the app. "Presently, there is a lot of wage theft," he said. "There has always been wage theft, and the truth is we’re going to put a stop to that." Mr. Trinidad, suggested the name for the app – Jornalero, which means day laborer in Spanish.

The app had its soft launch on Tuesday night, with beta testing to be held later this month at the Jackson Heights section of New York City day laborer stop that stretches for a mile along 69th Street. Day laborer centers in Brooklyn and on Staten Island will also be testing the product, which is available in Spanish and English.

The plan is for…

Seattle, WA (WorkersCompensation.com) – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered an Alaska aviation company to pay years of back wages, $100,000 in compensatory damages, and to reinstate a pilot who had been suspended, then fired and ostracized among the close-knit industry for reporting safety concerns at work.

Bald Mountain Air Services violated federal whistleblower laws with its actions against the employee in 2012. With 35-years of aviation experience, the pilot for the Homer-based company raised repeated safety concerns at work ranging from missed drug tests for pilots to poor recordkeeping.

“Voicing safety concerns at work should never cost someone their job,” said OSHA Acting Regional Administrator Galen Blanton. “This employee should be hired back, compensated and treated fairly from here on out.”

OSHA’s order requires Bald Mountain Air Services to:

• Pay the employee back wages at the rate of $350 per day from November 2012 until he receives a bona fide offer of reinstatement.
• Pay the employee $100,000 in compensatory damages for pain, suffering and mental distress.
• Expunge his employment records of any reference to the exercise of his rights under federal whistleblower law, and any reference to the adverse actions taken against him.
• Not retaliate or discriminate against him in any manner, nor convey to a third party any mention of the employee’s protected activity.
• Respondent…

Seattle, WA (WorkersCompensation.com) – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered an Alaska aviation company to pay years of back wages, $100,000 in compensatory damages, and to reinstate a pilot who had been suspended, then fired and ostracized among the close-knit industry for reporting safety concerns at work.

Bald Mountain Air Services violated federal whistleblower laws with its actions against the employee in 2012. With 35-years of aviation experience, the pilot for the Homer-based company raised repeated safety concerns at work ranging from missed drug tests for pilots to poor recordkeeping.

“Voicing safety concerns at work should never cost someone their job,” said OSHA Acting Regional Administrator Galen Blanton. “This employee should be hired back, compensated and treated fairly from here on out.”

OSHA’s order requires Bald Mountain Air Services to:

• Pay the employee back wages at the rate of $350 per day from November 2012 until he receives a bona fide offer of reinstatement.
• Pay the employee $100,000 in compensatory damages for pain, suffering and mental distress.
• Expunge his employment records of any reference to the exercise of his rights under federal whistleblower law, and any reference to the adverse actions taken against him.
• Not retaliate or discriminate against him in any manner, nor convey to a third party any mention of the employee’s protected activity.
• Respondent…

(Reuters) – Some 38 percent of U.S. multinationals, universities and non-profits surveyed by an arm of the State Department are allowing female employees to defer travel or leave countries where the Zika virus has been reported.

A fifth of the 321 respondents said they were giving male employees similar options, a sign of how employers’ travel policies are diverging as they react to the mosquito-borne virus and uncertainty about the way it is transmitted.

Scientists are investigating a potential link between Zika infections of pregnant women and more than 4,000 suspected cases in Brazil of microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can result in developmental problems.

The State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), which has a membership of more than 3,500 U.S. companies and institutions that do business abroad, surveyed its members and reported the…

For much of its 130 year history, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)¹ has collected data and published reports on occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. From the beginning, BLS has engaged in ongoing efforts to improve the breadth and accuracy of the data available for end users. As far back as 1912, the Occupational Safety and Health Statistics (OSHS) program published annual reports on work injuries and illnesses.² Two of the more recent annual reports are from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII), which began with publishing 1972 data in 1974,³ and the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), which began with publishing 1992 data in 1994.⁴ The SOII covers nonfatal work-related injuries and illnesses, and the CFOI covers fatal work-related injuries. In 2013, the SOII estimated that there were 3,007,300 occupational injuries and illnesses among private industry workers, a rate of 3.3 per 100 full-time equivalent workers. This was down from a rate of 5.0 a decade earlier. Likewise, CFOI data identified 4,585 fatal work injuries in 2013, down from 5,575 in 2003. BLS is continually improving collection methods to ensure that occupational injury, illness, and fatality data are accurately tracked.

The OSHS program has seen many new developments. The program has adapted to changes to the structure of jobs among American workers—moving from field to factory to office—and changing workplace safety regulations. This article…

A recent study indicates that a new physician staging processes by weight and volume of mesothelioma tumors may be helpful in predicting outcome. Mesothelioma is a fatal rare tumor and almost always associated with exposure to asbestos fibers. The development of mesothelioma commonly is diagnosed decades after the initial exposure to asbestos fiber.

Today’s post is shared from sciencedaily.com and reports a significant development in the treatment of the disease.

A new study suggests that significant improvements could be made in the scoring system physicians use to estimate the stage (severity) of mesothelioma, an aggressive and deadly cancer.

The current scoring system incorporates such factors as the size of the tumor and whether it has spread to other parts of the body. The study’s findings suggest that, in addition, tumor weight and volume "may be valuable components for staging malignant pleural mesothelioma."

An improved scoring system could provide a more accurate prognosis and help guide treatment, said lead author Wickii Vigneswaran, MD, MBA, who now is at Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Dr. Vigneswaran has performed nearly 200 mesothelioma surgeries, and he is among only a handful of surgeons nationwide who treat mesothelioma surgically.

The study is published in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg (2016)doi: 10.1093/ejcts/ezv422 First published online: January…