![]() Committees, State Associations & Affiliates.Visit the San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, Calif.) at Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. ©2017 the San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, Calif.) ![]() “The county eventually extended those services to other employees who were being treated through workers' compensation.” “The county provided all of the employees who were physically injured with the immediate services of nurse case managers and counseled them on the medical treatment options that were available to them,” Wert said. San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert issued a statement Wednesday, saying Reyes’ AB44 “modeled itself on the process created by the county to care for those who were injured on (Dec. Like Thompson, Ly said many employees of the county’s Environmental Health Services Division have been so traumatized they cannot return to work, and some have taken medical retirements. “I made an attempt, but I’m still having issues,” said Thompson, a 26-year county employee. Thompson, who was shot in the right leg and still has bullet fragments lodged in it, said she hasn’t been able to return to work, although she has tried. “Once you’ve been victimized by something like this, it shouldn’t be so hard to get help,” said Thompson, 51, of Devore, in a telephone interview Wednesday. Shooting victim Tracie Thompson would have liked to have seen the 104-week maximum for receiving workers compensation benefits extended under the new law. 2, 2015) shooting was historically unique, required ‘extraordinary action,’ and advised that (utilization review) could be overridden,” Fredericks said in an email Wednesday. “The county steadfastly maintained that it could not override utilization review despite being informed in early December 2016 by the California Department of Industrial Relations that the (Dec. He said it was a key reason so many survivors of the shooting were denied or delayed treatment for up to a year. Robert Fredericks, a Redlands-based insurance services specialist and advocate for the San Bernardino victims, expressed “deep disappointment” that the utilization review provision was stripped from the original draft of the bill. The only thing the law adds, Ly said, is it makes it mandatory, instead of optional, for a nurse case manager to be immediately assigned to an employee who is a victim of a terrorist attack. She said the gutting of key bill provisions originally introduced by Reyes, including the ability for employers to bypass the utilization review process, left the legislation without teeth. “The original language has been butchered.” The original bill she introduced was awesome,” said Geraldine Ly, a workers compensation attorney representing nine of the San Bernardino shooting victims in claims against the county. “She really did try as much as she could. Survivors of the attack and their advocates expressed disappointment with the new legislation, saying it didn’t go far enough, but commended Reyes for her strong efforts in getting the legislation passed and going to bat for the San Bernardino shooting victims. Among the provisions stripped from the bill included a proposal to bypass the utilization review process employers and workers compensation claims administrators use to determine what treatment to provide employees, said Galen Dobbins, a legislative aide for Reyes. Since Reyes introduced the bill, it has undergone seven rounds of amendments. Farook and Malik, both said by the FBI to be radicalized Muslims, were killed in a shootout with police hours after the attack. The shooting, committed by county health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, left 14 people dead and 22 wounded during a holiday luncheon/training seminar at the Inland Regional Center. But the provisions of the law are only applicable if the governor declares a state of emergency in connection with the act of terrorism, as was the case in the San Bernardino mass shooting. The new law mandates that treatment, whether medical or psychological, be provided by trained and qualified health-care professionals.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |