Grinberg: Legislature Considers Hospital Employee Presumption| Staff Compensation Information

By Gregory Grinberg

Thursday, March 4, 2021 | 180 | 1 | min read

I would like to make a humble proposal. What if employee compensation were only used for work-related injuries?

Gregory Grinberg

Imagine a system where an employee could claim that an injury was caused by industrial activity and receive benefits after determining that it was most likely to be the case.

That way, California employers would be responsible for the injuries caused by their business operations while not being general insurers against all the illnesses and harms one can endure in life.

Now consider Senate Bill 213, which snakes its way through the legislature and has as many opportunities to become law in California as anything else: “This bill would create rebuttable presumptions that [pretty much all injuries] This development or manifestation in a hospital employee who provides direct patient care in an acute hospital arose from and in the course of employment. “

The proposed legislation would create a presumption of industrial causation for a wide range of injuries and conditions, including “infectious diseases, cancer, musculoskeletal injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and respiratory diseases”. This presumption would also apply if the employee is no longer employed for up to three months per working year and up to ten years, depending on the condition.

In the case of musculoskeletal injuries such as respiratory diseases, an “injury that develops or manifests itself in a hospital employee who provides direct patient care in an acute hospital cannot be attributed to an illness that existed prior to this development or manifestation”.

We are all exposed to all kinds of illnesses or diseases, whether we are chronically unemployed or work 80 hour weeks each year. SB 213 does only one thing: as employers, hospitals are liable for most of these diseases.

Yes, hospital work and patient care are difficult and sometimes injuries. If so, California is already offering an insanely low bar to getting any compensation. SB 213 shifts the burden to hospitals to prove that a condition was NOT caused by work.

What impact can we expect if such a law comes into force? The cost of running hospitals is increasing and there are fewer resources for patient care. Hospitals already offer workers ‘insurance and benefits for legitimate workers’ compensation injuries, but would also be forced to pay for injuries that are not work-related.

How should i know Because work-related injuries are already covered without this assumption.

Hopefully the good people of Sacramento will realize that slaughtering every industry in California is not good policy, including hospitals.

Gregory Grinberg is the managing partner of Gale, Sutow & Associates’ SF Bay South office and a certified employee compensation law specialist. This post was reprinted with permission from Grinberg’s WCDefenseCA blog.