PDRater – Ogilvie ratings and PD calculators

Back to the drawing board

DOWNLOAD THE MATHEMATICAL PROOF AS A PDF!

A little while ago William S. Morris, an Applicant’s attorney, told me that the Ogilvie adjustment calculation could be further simplified. [1] He suggested the following[2] :

1. Earnings Loss[3][4]
   1. L = (PIESSE – PIEA) / PIESSE
2. Individualized Proportional Earnings Loss
   1. = (WPI / L) / 100
3. DFEC Adjustment Factor
   1. = ([1.81/a] * .1) + 1
   2. = ( (1.81 * .1)/a) + 1
   3. = (.181/a) + 1
   4. = 1 + (.181/a)
4. Ogilvie DFEC Adjusted Rating
   1. = WPI * DFEC Adjustment Factor
   2. = WPI * (1 + (.181/a) )
   3. = WPI * (1 + (.181 / Individualized Proportional Earnings Loss) )
   4. = WPI * (1 + (.181 / ( (WPI / L) / 100) ) )
   5. = WPI * (1 + (18.1 / ( (WPI / L)  ) )
   6. = WPI * (1 + (18.1 * (L/WPI) ) )
   7. = WPI + (18.1 * L)
5. Conclusion
   1. If the injured workers’ individualized proportional earnings loss is outside all of the FEC ranks, you may calculate the Ogilvie adjustment by adding (18.1*Earnings Loss) to the WPI.

The only flaw with the proofs offered by William and myself is that they are too exact.  The WCAB in Ogilvie never sets forth the exact process for performing the Ogilvie adjustment calculation – so the only official method involves rounding to different significant figures at different places.  Thus, a calculation performed in strict accordance with the WCAB in Ogilvie and through one of these mathematical proofs would differ very slightly.

What do you think? Leave a comment or drop me a line.

1. Photo courtesy of Dahveed76 [↩]
2. I’m paraphrasing here [↩]
3. PIESSE = Post Injury Earnings of Similarly Situated Employees [↩]
4. PIEA = Post Injury Earnings of Applicant [↩]

Would you sign my copy of Ogilvie?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was recently at the State Bar Convention in San Diego.  While at the Steve Jimenez Memorial Special Recognition Awards Ceremony, I bumped into one of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board commissioners.[1]

It was one of those days where I’m kicking myself for not lugging around my copy of Ogilvie II.[2]

I got to tell this commissioner, “I’m a big fan of your work.”[3]

1. You’ve got a one in nine chance of guessing which one.  ;)  [↩]
2. Photo courtesy of USAFA87 [↩]
3. Yes, yes, I already know I’m a great big nerd. [↩]

To sleep, perchance to dream

And my dream is to do four walk through settlements at three different WCAB district offices in one single day.[1][2]

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I even have a plan as to how to get this done.  If I ever got the chance to do four walk throughs at four Boards in one day, I’d do it like this:

1. Get up early, arrive at the Santa Rosa WCAB at 8:00 AM and attempt the first walk through
2. Head to San Francisco over the Golden Gate for the second walk through
3. In the afternoon, do the third walk-through in San Jose
4. Hit the road for Oakland and do the fourth walk through
5. According to Google Maps, that’s 234 miles and 4 hours and 26 minutes

I honestly don’t even know if this is possible. [3] There are a million things that could go wrong.  I could hit traffic, I could be missing a page from a benefits printout, someone could change their mind about the settlement, a doctor could issue a supplemental report.  I also know that I would need a LOT of things to go right.  Here’s my tentative checklist:

1. Four walk through settlements ready to be approved at four different Boards (this is easily the toughest part)
2. Four claims examiners standing by on speed dial
3. One full calendar day
4. A fully charged GPS, two fully charged cell phones
5. A full tank of gas
6. $55.00 or so ($10 for bridge tolls, about $5 for photocopies, and easily another $40 for parking)
7. A bag of snacks (I’m probably not going to have time for lunch)
8. Call ahead to all of the Boards to make sure I can do a walk through that day
9. The good will and cooperation of the Board staff and my colleagues

However, having done two walk through settlements in a single morning gives me hope.

1. Photo courtesy of robertrice [↩]
2. I told this dream to a co-worker yesterday and he laughed and called me a nerd.  Pssh – tell me something I don’t know, Steve. [↩]
3. Perhaps this might be easier in Southern California – there’s as many as seven Boards within about 15 or 20 miles of one another. [↩]

Ogilvie for Dummies

UPDATE: DOWNLOAD THE MATHEMATICAL PROOF AS A PDF!

Get ready to stop paying people to do Ogilvie calculations, recycle your Gearheart/Gerlach handouts, and delete your Frost Excel spreadsheet.[1]  We’re about to go all “Beautiful Mind.”

Yesterday while at the Oakland WCAB an Applicant’s attorney mentioned he noticed an interesting trend in the Ogilvie formula. [2][3] He said that whenever he does an Ogilvie calculation for someone with a 100% earnings loss and a modest WPI, the WPI is always increased by 18. [4]

I ran a number of test calculations on this theory and it appeared to be right.  My calculations show that up to a WPI of 44 the increase appears to always be 18.1, but the last “0.1″ always gets rounded down.  However, appearing to be right just isn’t good enough for me.  And, because I am just truly that nerd, here’s the fully mathematical proof:

Let’s break down the calculations at the heart of Ogilvie:

1. Earnings Loss[5][6]
   1. = (PIESSE – PIEA) / PIESSE
   2. = ($1.00 – $0.00) / $1.00
   3. = $1.00 / $1.00
   4. = 1
   5. = 100%
2. Individualized Proportional Earnings Loss
   1. = (WPI / Earnings Loss) / 100
   2. = (WPI / 100% )/100
   3. = (WPI / 1) / 100
   4. = WPI / 100
   5. Thus, for any WPI less than 45 and a total loss of earnings, the Individualized Earnings Loss will always be less than 0.450 in Table A.
3. DFEC Adjustment Factor
   1. = ([1.81/a] * .1) + 1
   2. = ( (1.81 * .1)/a) + 1
   3. = (.181/a) + 1
   4. = 1 + (.181/a)
4. Ogilvie DFEC Adjusted Rating
   1. = WPI * DFEC Adjustment Factor
   2. = WPI * (1 + (.181/a) )
   3. = WPI * (1 + (.181 / Individualized Proportional Earnings Loss) )
   4. = WPI * (1 + (.181 / (WPI / 100) ) )
   5. = WPI * (1 + (.181 * 100 / WPI ) )
   6. = WPI * (1 + (18.1/ WPI ) )
   7. = WPI * ( (WPI/WPI) + (18.1/ WPI ) )
   8. = WPI * (WPI + 18.1/ WPI )
   9. = WPI * (WPI + 18.1/ WPI )
   10. = WPI + 18.1
5. Conclusion
   1. If you have an Applicant with a 100% post injury earnings loss and a WPI of 44 or less, you should rebut the FEC and arrive at an adjusted WPI that is equal to the original WPI plus 18.1.

Therefore, I propose a new Ogilvie formula that will be easy for anyone to remember:

• Step 1: If the injured worker has a 100% earnings loss and a WPI of 44 or less, add 18.1 to the WPI and round down.
• Step 2: If the injured worker has less than 100% earnings loss or a WPI of 45 or higher, go to Step 3.
• Step 3: For heaven’s sake, just make your life easier and use the calculators here at PDRater.com.

What do you think?  Leave a comment or drop me a line.

1. Sorry Jeff, Mark, Mark, and Ray! [↩]
2. Thank you “S”!  Unfortunately, he did not want to be named. [↩]
3. Man, I *wish* I could take credit for this observation. [↩]
4. Not multiplied by 18, but an addition of 18. [↩]
5. PIESSE = Post Injury Earnings of Similarly Situated Employees [↩]
6. PIEA = Post Injury Earnings of Applicant [↩]

Refresh for updates

In no particular order:[1]

• I often refer to myself as a Workers’ Compensation nerd.  The other day I realized that would be a GREAT website name!  Unfortunately, WCNerd.com is already taken by “white collar nerd.”  Bummer, no?  What a great e-mail address that would have been, too!
• With well over a 100 posts and counting I thought it was time to include a “tag cloud.”  Its on the bottom of the right sidebar of this website.  Its basically a grouping of the common words I use to tag various posts.  The more common a word is the larger it appears.  The top contenders are pretty telling
  • PDRater
  • Technobabble
  • Website Updates
  • Workers Compensation
  • Calculators
  • Free
• To help with the website navigation and use of the “tag cloud” I’ve started being more liberal with how I tag my various posts.  Its actually kinda fun.
• I’m  using a new e-mail contact form.  I was using “Contact Form 7,” which has a truly impressive feature list. While effective, I didn’t much care for this plugin because of its complexity.  What I really wanted was a quick and easy way for website visitors to send me e-mail.  Recently I found “Tiny Contact Form” by Tom Braider to be exactly what I needed.  It is small, simple to configure, and easy to include.  I’m actually using a modified version of the really fantastic “Tiny Contact Form” plugin.  I’m rather proud of my modification on this plugin and even sent Tom Braider my changes which he ended up incorporating into the next version!
• Google recently swallowed up Feedburner.  I was using Feedburner to manage the RSS feeds for this website.  The only problem was that it was causing all kinds of problems.  My RSS reader wasn’t picking up the new posts from my own blog!  So, I scrapped the Feedburner management of my RSS feed and went back to the native WordPress support for RSS (which is pretty damn good).

1. Photo courtesy of RandomChu [↩]