Workers who need brief medical care and don't miss much work fare pretty well. But a worker who has a more serious or permanent injury will get caught in a slow-motion marathon that keeps many workers in limbo, unable to plan for the future, unable to get on with their lives. This is true even though 90 percent of them have a permanent disability of less than 25 percent and have either gone back to work or reached maximum recovery in an average of five months, according to a 1997 report by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice. Delays have gotten worse since the state Legislature restructured the system in 1993, experts say. Insurers place a large share of the blame for delays on the state Division of Workers' Compensation, which they say takes too long to judge disputes and rate permanent disabilities.
Insurers also say the agency does a poor job of helping workers navigate the system.
Casey Young, who heads the division, acknowledges his agency has shortcomings. He said one of his top priorities next year will be a reorganization he hopes will solve many of the problems. The state Labor Code, which is the bible of workers compensation, is 1,000 pages long. For related case law, the index alone runs to nearly 2,000 pages, said Edward Woodward, president of the California Workers' Compensation Institute, the research arm of the insurance industry. Some worker advocates believe, however, that the delays are a calculated strategy by insurers to hold on to their money as long as they can, so they can invest it.