The Division of Workers’ Compensation’s latest attempt to revise utilization review rules has been rejected by the Office of Administrative Law after it found several sections were too ambiguous and littered with procedural errors.

The proposed rules were meant to implement long-overdue UR reforms from legislation passed nearly a decade ago. In its decision of disapproval, the OAL flagged vague language, missing definitions and flawed documentation that effectively denied stakeholders the ability to comment on significant revisions.

The rejection highlights an alarming pattern of delay and dysfunction at the DWC. Though AB 1124 and SB 1160 were passed in 2015 and 2016, the division took nearly a decade to draft regulations to install its most worker-friendly provisions. These laws were designed to reduce treatment delays for injured workers, but the DWC’s sluggish rulemaking process has left many of those reforms unrealized. Even now, the division’s failure to clearly define terms and to harmonize deadlines across forms and regulations raises serious questions about whether it is prioritizing the needs of injured workers or simply checking a box.

More troubling is how the DWC bypassed public scrutiny on key changes. According to the OAL, the division modified several words during a 45-day comment period without properly marking the edits, preventing the public, especially injured workers and their advocates, from seeing and responding to the changes. These are not minor procedural lapses; they are violations of public trust in a process that is supposed to be transparent and inclusive.

This kind of regulatory incoherence only adds confusion to an already complex system, ultimately harming injured workers who depend on timely access to medical treatment. The DWC says it will revise and resubmit the rules to meet its target effective date of Jan. 1, 2026. But the division must do more than fix formatting errors. It must take seriously the comments from the injured worker community and ensure that the next version of the rules is clear, fair and fully open to public input.

This opinion by the California Applicants' Attorneys Association communications team is republished, with permission, from the CAAA website.