WCDefenseCA

A Modest Proposal on the Broken QME System

No, dear readers, your humble blogger is not proposing that we eat our beloved QMEs.  Nor am I proposing that we go back to those wonderful days when each side would name its champion and let the doctors battle to the (intellectual) death, as was the case for pre-SB-899 matters.

This truly is a modest proposal: let’s pay QMEs more.

Now, dear readers of the defense community, before you delete my e-mails, unsubscribe from my blog, and demand the immediate return of Cognac and cigars that you so generously sent my way (hint, hint), hear me out.

Time is money, and doctors are always short on both.  There are bills to pay, patients to see, etc., etc.

So why not make it worth their while to dedicate more time to the files and applicants and cases?  What’s more, if we put a little more cheese in this brutal mouse-trap that is workers’ compensation, perhaps we could have more doctors persuaded to go through the insane hoops of becoming and remaining a QME.

We’d have fewer repeat players, less grudges, and a greater number of competent physicians participating in this system.  Besides, look at your benefits printout- the biggest costs are not the QME fees, and a few more bucks in that department could bring us better reports (which don’t need depositions to cure), and probably lower ratings based on up-to-date medical findings.

Don’t get me wrong, dear readers, there are great QMEs out there, but the non-workers’ comp demands on a physician’s time, when coupled with the additional expense and delay of the QME application process, make it harder for those physicians unfamiliar with the system to jump into the pool that the Medical Unit keeps nice and warm behind its high walls.

Now, your humble blogger could be wrong on this one, but it looks like 1999 was the last time the regulations were amended to change the monetary value of each unit of time.  Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, 12.50 in 1999 has the same buying power as $17.55 today.

In other words, to keep pace with inflation, the QME pay should have gone up 40%.  That’s not, by the way, to keep pace with the cost of increased medical school tuition or cost of living in California, which have gone up much faster than the rate of inflation.

So the next time the legislature decides to crack open the wine cellar and engage in some good-intentioned reform, why not slip in a raise for QMEs?  After all, it’s the defense community that’s footing the bill.