Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Workers’ comp lawyers at PennStuart were due for new computers. They bought laptops. The reason?

They soon will have electronic access over the Internet to the entire file of a claimant at most hearings before deputy commissioners and the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Such access will be the final stage of an ambitious plan to make the commission’s work largely paperless.

“It is going to change the way we practice,” said Ramesh Murthy, the head of PennStuart’s worker’s comp practice group, which has offices in Abingdon, Bristol and Richmond.

Murthy and several other workers’ comp specialists said they expect it will be a good system in the end, but not without, as Murthy put it, “a lot of moaning along the way.”

He appreciates the possibility of having access to the complete file wherever he has a computer and an Internet connection – not to mention appearing at a hearing without a hand truck loaded with documents. But he acknowledges, “I kind of like the paper file. There’s a sense of security in having it right there with you.”

All three members of the commission – outgoing Chairman Virginia R. Diamond, incoming Chairman William L. Dudley and its newest member, Roger L. Williams – were at a session at the Jefferson Hotel last week attended by more than a hundred worker’s comp specialists to discuss the project.

Williams assured the practitioners, “This in a very real sense is going to make it much easier to practice law.” And he emphasized, “It hasn’t changed it that much in principle. In form, yes, but not in principle.”

The new system started with the 200,000 accident reports the commission gets annually, most of them through the insurance carriers for employers. More than 90 percent of those are not contested and are handled among the employer, the carrier and the worker with little involvement from the commission or the workers’ comp bar.

Those reports are filed through an electronic data interchange, or EDI, using standards adopted by the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards that encourages consistency among carriers and state commissions across the country. The commission required the largest carriers to file the reports electronically beginning in October, and the smaller carriers and self-insured companies are supposed to be doing so by July 1.

Diamond said that effort is going smoothly and may even be ahead of schedule.

But not all claims come in such a neat electronic package. In fact, as Murthy noted, a worker can write his claim on a “Post-it note and that’s sufficient” if he gets it to the commission within two years of an injury.

That won’t change. Claimants and their attorneys can continue to do what they’ve been doing on paper. But the documents they provide will be scanned and the official file will be the electronic one.

Diamond said the commission’s system will be unique in that it will allow the claimant and the claims adjuster to manage the file online once it has been set up with a case number and password to insure privacy and security. The claimant himself can start the process by logging on to the commission’s Web site and clicking on a link to the WebFile system and clicking again to register as a claimant.

Skepticism about the Internet savvy of a typical laborer apparently isn’t but so well founded. More than 1,000 claimants already have viewed their files through the Internet.

Some attorneys are a little miffed that they will be the last stakeholders to have access to the electronic files. The final design and development of the system for attorney access is underway and is scheduled for testing in September, training over the following two months and implementation in November.

The commission and especially Matthew Bryant, director of the technical alignment program, as it is called, hope that its benefits will be so apparent that many practitioners will be willing to forgo paper notice and filing.

They will be able to upload electronic versions of motions and records to the file in PDF format and get instant acknowledgement that they have been submitted. All parties to the case will receive an electronic notice whenever a document is filed.

However, unless the party has agreed to forgo mail or other non-electronic forms of notice, attorneys also will have to provide paper notice when they add something to the file electronically.

The commission requires each law firm to designate a site administrator and will provide a FIN (firm identification number) for keeping track of the firm. The system will track individual attorneys through their bar numbers once they’re set up with a firm.

Bryant said designation of a firm administrator reflects the limited ability of the commission to provide support for individual users.

Because the file will be available electronically over the Internet, most hearing sites will have a high speed Wi-Fi connection, but that will not always be the case, at least at first, Bryant said. Attorneys should make themselves aware of any access limitations at a hearing site and print out documents from the electronic record beforehand if necessary, he said.

Charles F. Midkiff, a workers’ comp specialist in Richmond, said he has been relieved that the commission has backed off from proposals that weren’t compatible with existing law. That has eased his concerns that the electronic filing system would become “a springboard to come up with new rules for the game.”

The effort reflects the abandonment of paper by the entire insurance industry and probably will result in a more efficient system in the long run, he added. “What I’m very much concerned about is the transition.”

Douglas K.W. Landau, a Herndon attorney who has a Social Security disability practice in addition to his workers’ comp work in several states, said he has long advocated the use of standardized accident report files and has seen the benefit of digitized records in his Social Security practice.

“There’ll be some serious growing pains,” he predicted. “The carriers are in it whole hog” while some attorneys and claimants lack the technological know-how to take advantage of the project, he said. “There may be haves and have-nots and nothing in between.”

Louis D. Snesil, a Richmond workers’ comp specialist, plans on being in the “haves” category. He’s upgrading his scanning and copying equipment and says, “While it may have some frustrating moments, I think it’s going to ease life.”

But the response to a question from Bryant at last week’s session suggests there may be some “have nots” as well.

He asked how many in the group used a laptop regularly. Only about a third of the participants raised a hand.

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