• Navigating the EDD website
• Performing the Ogilvie/DFEC analysis on each rating string

If you can rate a report, you can get a PDRater DFEC Rebuttal Analysis Report in less than 2 minutes.

Where do you go from here?

• READ the PDRater DFEC Rebuttal Analysis Report frequently asked questions!
• LEARN how to calculate your own Ogilvie/DFEC  analysis or request a PDRater Report!
• DOWNLOAD a FREE SAMPLE PDRater DFEC Rebuttal Analysis Report!
• GET a PDRater DFEC Rebuttal Analysis Report right now!

PDRater: Putting a friendly face on EAMS!

I’ve just built  another new workers’ compensation calculator.  Actually, it is a look up tool that will help workers’ compensation professionals file documents with EAMS.[1]

While I think the recent Verify!® social security number validator may be more intriguing for defense attorneys and claims examiners, I think this new EAMS tool will probably be more useful to Applicant attorneys.

Interested?  Just drop me a line to become a beta tester!

1. Photo courtesy of Irene on the run

Even this guy can do the Ogilvie adjustment calculation in his head

If you’re using my Ogilvie calculator for situations involving a 100% earnings loss, you’re working too hard. [1]

If you have 100% earnings loss and WPI less than 45, the Ogilvie adjustment formula will always result in WPI + 18.

Not to worry.  I can make Ogilvie even easier:

1. FREE Ogilvie Mathematical Proof v0.1.
2. FREE Ogilvie Adjustment Chart v5!

The Ogilvie mathematical proof has been available for several weeks for peer review.  I’ve only received positive feedback.[2]  The above Ogilvie Adjustment Chart has been testing by myself and other workers’ compensation attorneys, but like everything else on this site is provided subject to all legal disclaimers.

Here’s a peek at what they look like:

Ogilvie Mathematical Proof

Ogilvie Adjustment Chart

1. Photo courtesy of lincolnblues
2. An anonymous source from the DWC actually called it “cool”!

WordPress Upgrade

Since updating this website to WordPress v2.8 in the middle of June they’ve released two additional security updates.  Unfortunately, the latest update also required a little extra tinkering and work on my part.  I look on constant security fixes for this fantastic (free!) open source software as a small price to pay for increased security.

Again, the calculators should all be completely impervious to changes in the WordPress program itself.  However, its theoretically possible you might notice a little weirdness in how the website looks/acts.  If so, please drop me a line and let me know so I can take a look.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rating…

How to stretch your law office's budget

Cost: $0.00

Savings: $150/computer

Here’s an easy way to save your law practice several hundred dollars in the next few months.  The next time you have to purchase a new computer do not buy a copy of MicroSoft Office, MicroSoft Word, or WordPerfect.  Even basic versions of these programs can run several hundred dollars per computer.[1]  You don’t have to purchase these programs!

Try OpenOffice instead!  I have been using OpenOffice on my home and work computers for the last three years and have been extremely happy with it.  I have given copies of this program to family, friends, and colleagues who are also all very happy with it.  I’ve used it for simple correspondence, legal pleadings, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Here are a few “real world” benefits:

OpenOffice is totally 100% free open source software

Free as in free.  Give it to your friends.  Install it at home and on your kids’ computers.  Don’t worry about software piracy.  Its totally, completely, free.

OpenOffice has better document recovery

Its important to know that OpenOffice is much more stable than anything MicroSoft or WordPerfect has to offer.  It is extremely rare that OpenOffice crashes on me.  If you’re using MicroSoft Word and you haven’t saved your document at least once, a single crash will completely erase all of your progress.  The very few times that OpenOffice has crashed on me I have gotten all of my data back – even when I haven’t saved the file once.

OpenOffice has everything you need

OpenOffice has all the features of MicroSoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and WordPerfect.  You can also use the OpenOffice suite of software to open, edit, and save to MicroSoft Word and WordPerfect formats.  It won’t automatically open the MicroSoft Office 2007 formats yet, but you can find plugins and software to do this for you (also for free).  OpenOffice has spell check, grammar check, autocorrect, macros, and templates (even legal pleading templates!).

OpenOffice can do more than its competitors

OpenOffice can save as, open, and even edit a PDF.  Editing a PDF requires a plugin, but it is very easy to install (and also free!).  Just being able to print to a PDF is going to make your documents easier to share with others and, hopefully, one day easier to share with EAMS too.[2][3]

If you’re not convinced to make the leap with your next computer purchase, then download OpenOffice now and give it a shot on your current computer.  Here’s their website link:

Download OpenOffice.org – free word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software

1. Photo courtesy of Krug6
2. Not that EAMS will share with you.
3. Don’t take it personally – EAMS pretty much hates everyone.

Permanent disability calculators only a workers' compensation nerd could love

And, really, what’s not to love about free permanent disability calculators?[1][2]

A few days ago I disparaged the MicroSoft and their new search engine, Bing.com.  Today I tried a search for “permanent disability calculator” on their site.  Guess who’s at the top?[3]

Search engine optimization, like fortune,  is a fickle creature.[4][5]

1. Photo courtesy of aWee
2. That’s a picture of an accounting sheet!
3. Hint: the website’s name rhymes with “PDRater“
4. This post has been brought to you by O Fortuna and the Rubaiyat.
5. Look at me, waxing all philosophical!

Wanted: "Net work" for MPN's

I’ve updated the Medical Provider Network lists as of 6/5/2009.  Most of the updates to the MPN lists page are contributed by loyal users of this website.  What’s interesting about the latest update is that it was actually contributed by an insurance company themselves![1]

One thing I’ll never understand is why so many MPN lists have logins and passwords.  The whole point of a website is to make that kind of information available.  Its not like these lists of MPN doctors and providers are secret, right?  If anything, making these website more user friendly and more navigable will enable people (injured workers, applicant attorneys, defense attorneys, and judges) to actually find physicians and help smooth the operation of the system.

In any case, I think this is a great first step.  I would love to offer everyone a unified source for all California Medical Provider Network websites, logins, and passwords.  It would be even better to have the insurance companies and third party administrators just send me the updated information for their links as they update their sites.

1. Photo courtesy of júbilo·haku

Up, dates!

Unfortunately, one of the coolest features of my calculators is that some of them will give you the answer you’re looking for before you’ve even finished typing the search term.  This works with the:

• EAMS body part code finder
• EAMS document title finder
• EAMS document type finder
• EAMS registered offices search function
• DWC forms finder
• Dollar Value Calculator (“Money Chart”)
• Life Expectancy Calculator

While these are all very cool while you’re sitting at your computer, I found out (much to my dismay) that this system didn’t work at all when using these online calculators from my cell phone! [1] Well, I’ve updated the calculators to make them more compatible with more phones.[2]

Save yourself from your own workers’ compensation claim and just leave that heavy rating manual at home.

1. It has to do with cross-browser compatibility and inconsistent support for javascript events.  I doubt anyone is interested in this.
2. Photo courtesy of Hunda

Riddle me this!

Yesterday afternoon in Fresno I showed another attorney how I could perform an Ogilvie calculation on my cell phone using the best workers’ compensation calculator website in the world.

• He looked at me and asked me, “How much does this cost?”
• I answered, “They’re free.”
• He asked me, “Well, why the heck am I paying for _______?”[1]

I don’t know.[2]

1. Oh, YOU know who he was talking about…
2. Photo courtesy of Santheo

Permanent disability calculators that will fit in any pocket!

I was at the San Jose WCAB on Friday.  Since recently discovering that I could run this website’s permanent disability rating calculators from my phone’s web browser, this was the first time I left my rating manual, money chart, and date wheel in the car.[1]

It was great.  That morning I used my phone to:

• Find the ADJ number associated with the legacy SJO number on my file
• Calculate an Ogilvie adjustment of a rating string
• Calculate the number days between two dates
• Perform old and new schedule ratings
• Perform a CVC (combined values chart) calculation[2]

The benefit for me is not so much that I don’t have to carry the rating manuals, dollar value charts, and date wheels.  Unlike these tools, my phone is not something I’m going to misplace or loan and never see again.

The best part is that if I want to refer back to the calculation I just performed, I can just e-mail it to myself!

1. Photo courtesy of .robbie
2. Oh, and I called my client at one point.  Ha!

This phone will not run PDRater calculators, but yours might!

I recently discovered that installing the Opera Mini web browser on my “smartphone” has allowed me to run this website’s workers’ compensation calculators from my phone.[1]

Since launching this website I’ve given a lot of thought to support for cell phones.  There just are not many phones that can run these calculators.[2] The glaring and notable exception is the iPhone.

Amusingly, one of this website’s users has asked for an “iPhone app” version of this site.  Seriously, you’ve got one of the few phones that can use this site and that’s not good enough for you?  (Thanks Chris!)

This is huge.  It means:

• I can blog from the Board[3]
• More importantly, no more bulky money charts or rating manuals at the Board!

1. Photo courtesy of storm gal
2. It would be more correct to say there are not many phones that support javascript and AJAX well enough to interact with this website in a meaningful fashion.
3. Probably a lot more interesting for me than it is for you…

PDRater: No Bills!

To this day, most of the e-mails I receive are from people asking me some variation of “No, really, how much does it cost to use these calculators? When am I going to be charged? What’s the catch?”

I intend to keep all the calculators free for anyone who cares to use them. I have built this website because I really do enjoy the hell out of blogging about tech stuff and workers’ comp law, dissecting complex workers’ compensation math formulas, and building something useful to myself and other professionals. This is quite literally how I spend my free time. I’m just that nerdy.

Getting an upgrade!

Late last week a user asked for a new feature.[1]  He wanted to be able to perform the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculation and have the results e-mailed to him.[2] Well, I built it![3]

To e-mail yourself a calculation, perform the calculation as normal.  When the website returns your calculation, it will say “E-mail Me!“  Just click that button and it will send an e-mail to the address you used to register for this website.

However, here’s the cool part:  I’ve installed this new e-mail system into every calculator! [4] No more having to copy and paste!  Just click one button and your calculation will show up in your inbox![5]

Although I intend this to be a paid-subscription-only feature, I am going to leave it open for all users while I get some feedback.  So, what do you think?  Please leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail!

1. Thanks Dennis!
2. Photo courtesy of Vernhart
3. Why, what did you do with your Saturday morning?
4. I haven’t installed it in some of the EAMS lookup functions
5. If you filled in the boxes for Applicant, WCAB #, and File #, it will include this information in your e-mail as well.  This is only for your convenience and not a requirement.

Wordpress

A friend of mine owns and operates a number of websites – all of which run on ASP/.NET/MS-SQL servers.  He knows what he’s talking about, but he’s fairly dismissive of WordPress, PHP, and MySQL.

All this time I’ve been raving about WordPress, telling him that you can basically do anything with it.  I’ve mentioned how easy it is to use, how easy it is to maintain, its open source, how many global corporations use WordPress to build their websites, how its the tool of choice for so many designers, and how huge the WordPress community is.

In the meantime, he’s referring to his millions of rows in his “real-SQL, MicroSoft SQL” database.  I believe he’s been stuck thinking of PHP and MySQL as “kiddie” stuff, just not ready for big time.

That is, he’s been dismissive of WordPress until about two months ago.  In the last two months other people (SEO consultants, professional designers) have been raving about WordPress to him too.

I think he’s finally coming around.

Indy 500

Wow!  500 registered users!

Last month I mentioned that this website had a record number of new visitors.  I honestly thought that was an anomalous one day spike in traffic.  Instead we’ve had a sustained increase in new visitors and people signing up to use the workers’ compensation calculators for free.

Since February 13, 2009[1] I’ve enjoyed posting about:

• New Important Workers’ Compensation Cases
  • XYZZXSJO2 v. SIF
  • Benson v. WCAB affirmed
  • Ogilvie v. WCAB (en banc)
  • Almaraz/Guzman v. WCAB (en banc)
• Two New Calculators
  • Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator
  • XYZZXSJO2 Future Life Pension Rate with COLA/SAWW Increases[2]
• Online Glasses – Reviewed!
  • Goggles4U.com Review Part I, Goggles4U.com Review Part II, and Goggles4U coupon: “glassyeyes“
  • GlobalEyeglasses.com Review and GlobalEyeglasses.com coupon: “glassyeyes“
  • How to Order Glasses Online
  • Pupillary Distance Matters
• PDRater.com Milestones:
  • 400 registered users!
  • 300 registered users!
  • 200 registered users!
  • 100 registered users!
  • PDRater.com is one year old!
  • Relaunch of PDRater.com!

Ever since I relaunched this website I’ve had this idea in the back of my mind that getting to 500 users would be a big deal.  There are literally hundreds of workers’ compensation professionals who rely on this website and its calculators to make their lives a little easier.  This certainly feels like a big deal to me.

1. When the 400th user registered.
2. I am keeping this calculator in beta testing until I get a little more feedback.  If you want to try it out, just drop me a line!

XYZZXSJO2 - The sequel!

Last week I posted about a recent case from the San Jose WCAB that indicated a life pension SAWW[1] increase is applied on the first January 1 after the date of injury.  You can find a download of the XYZZXSJO2 case here.

I’ve just finished the COLA / SAWW future life pension rate calculator to determine what the future life pension rates are assuming a COLA / SAWW increase of 4.7% per year.  If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester for this COLA / SAWW calculator for life pension increases, please drop me a line and ask for access. [2]

Please keep in mind that this is not a life pension with SAWW / COLA increase commutation calculator.  The actuarial math involved in performing that calculation is … intense.

As an interesting side note, this week I saw my very first DEU commutation of a life pension with COLA increase.  Unlike the typical commutations everyone receives from the DEU, this commutation calculation was devoid of the actual methodology used.  I was pretty disappointed to find this out.

No matter!  Help beta test the new calculator by dropping me a line.  After you’ve given it a whirl, let me know what you think.

1. SAWW means State Average Weekly Wage
2. If you have already helped me out as a beta tester, you already have access to this calculator.

Workers' Compensation Calculator

I had an interesting e-mail exchange with a friend (and fellow workers’ compensation professional) the other day.[1]

We were discussing the impacts of Ogilvie on 2005 schedule ratings.  He had asked me whether I intended to update the 2005 permanent disability rating calculator to include FEC Ranks after the scheduled 8.  I believe he had suggested FEC Ranks 9 through 20.

I have no intention of manufacturing FEC Ranks 9 through 20 for the following reasons:

• Maintaining Standards. The entire point of a rating schedule is to allow a standardized method for calculating disability and expressing those disability calculations.   If I invented my own FEC Rank system beyond the scheduled 1-8 Ranks, I would essentially be creating my own rating calculation system.  I’ve gone to considerable lengths to ensure that the rating strings produced by these permanent disability calculators are as standardized, recognizeable, and universal as possible.
• FEC Ranks are Irrelevant. The FEC Rank system is a simplified method of applying DFEC adjustment factors.  When you use the FEC Rank of a particular body part to adjust the standard using the charts on pages 2-6 and 2-7 of the 2005 PDRS (permanent disability rating schedule), what you’re really doing is essentially multiplying your standard disability against the FEC adjustment factor associated with the particular FEC Rank for the body part in question.  An FEC Rank is only useful for telling you the appropriate FEC adjustment factor to apply to the standard disability.  Thus, FEC Ranks are irrelevant and FEC adjustment factors are all important.
• Arbitrary FEC Ranks. FEC Rank 1 has an FEC adjustment factor of “1.100″.  However, using the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal formula, it is possible to end up with very low FEC adjustment factors.  In extreme circumstances it would be possible to have a negative FEC adjustment factor.  The only way to resolve this would be to have several possible negative FEC Ranks.  Besides being somewhat silly, worrying about additional FEC Ranks[2] misses the point.  If you’re using the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal formula properly, the result will be a new FEC adjustment factor.  If you already have the FEC adjustment factor, you have no need for the FEC Rank!

When I had discussed the impact of Ogilvie earlier, I had pointed out that in some cases the resulting formula will dictate that you use a different FEC Rank than the one indicated by the affected body part.  In other cases you will need to use an entirely new FEC adjustment factor.  In order to keep the 2005 disability calculator current I will eventually have to create a way for the user to override a body part’s standard FEC Rank and specify a new FEC Rank or their own FEC adjustment factor.

I’m not in any particular rush to develop this feature since Ogilvie seems to require three years of post-injury earnings.  I doubt we’re going to see litigation begin in earnest over Ogilvie issues for another 18 to 24 months.

1. Photo courtesy of Street Fly JZ
2. Both higher and lower than the normal 8

Combined Values Chart for the 2005 PDRS

A few weeks ago I posted about the Multiple Disabilities Table for combining disabilities with injuries prior to 2005.

For injuries after 2005 we must turn to the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule.  When combining disabilities for injuries after 2005 there are several possible alternatives.  You can:

• Open up your copy of the AMA Guidelines to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Fifth Edition to pages 604 through 606.
• Open up your copy of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule to pages 8-1 through 8-4.[1]
• Reverse engineer the combined values formula from the three pages of 4 point font in the Combined Values Chart.[2]
• OR, my personal favorite, take 30 seconds to sign up for free and use the combined values chart calculator whenever you want!

1. In case you’re wondering, the chart on the right is a super-condensed version of the Combined Values Chart on pages 8-2 through 8-4.
2. Honestly, I don’t recommend this.  It wasn’t fun.

Wordpress Upgrade

I upgraded to WordPress v2.7.1 as soon as it came out (after testing on another website, of course).  I can honestly say WordPress is the only software I use that I actually look forward to upgrading.

Since version 2.7 RC 1, upgrading to the next version of WordPress has been this easy:

How to Upgrade WordPress

You click “Upgrade Automatically” and wait about 5 seconds.

You’re done.

Not entirely off topic: a friend of mine asked me yesterday about the best way to put up a new website.  She had thought about using Yahoo Site Builder or some such.  Yahoo and its like are great at building free, quick, and ugly websites.  If you’re going to publish on the internets, why not just opt for something just as easy and that has hundreds, if not thousands of possible totally free themes to choose from?  I say, go with WordPress.

I used to code sites by hand – that’s a chump’s game.  Just install WordPress and call it a day.

So Many Calclators, So Little Time

After some additional testing and feedback, I have launched the Ogilvie Calculator aka DFEC Calculator aka Diminished Future Earning Capacity Calculator.[1]

To all of my friendly beta-testers:  Thank you!

So, what are you waiting for?  Signing up for this website is totally free and takes 30 seconds.  Log in, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

1. Photo courtesy of teclasorg.