The New Online Qualified Medical Evaluation Form

The new online QME Panel request form 106 is most definitely the easiest form to fill out that the Division of Workers’ Compensation has created. This form was made available on October 1, 2015, after a press release in July announced that the paper format will no longer be accepted. For all intents and purposes, this new technologically advanced format sufficiently does its duty and provides applicant and defendant attorney representatives with the most efficient mode of objecting to whichever labor code section happens to apply.   This can all be done in a matter of minutes.

This new online form comes at a time when the workers’ compensation administrative system seems to be in a state of positively charged rolling changes designed to streamline the processes that keep the courts regularly behind. It all started with the division going paperless in 2008, instituting the Electronic Adjudication Management System which was designed to help the courts go paperless. Side bar, it’s a funny word, the word paperless, it should mean just what it implies, however, in reality, it created the need for more paper to facilitate the use of the EAMS paperless system! I have found this exact thing to be true in many so- called “paperless” offices. Where some call themselves paperless, I find that paper is still needed and sometimes, albeit unwittingly, even cause more paper to be wasted. Even though EAMS did not solve the paperless riddle, it did achieve what it originally set out to do, which was to bring the workers’ compensation courts up to date in this internet-based world.

Since then, the work comp division has rolled out several EAMS system updates to make the work comp fish tank easier to swim in. These updates have been rolling since the date of the implementation and they keep rolling. The new online QME request form is another way to bring the work comp division up to date. Although this new online form is optimistically received, with all things new from the Division of Workers’ Compensation, we can expect that there may be some glitches hiding behind the shadows. I have already experienced a glitch when filling out the form just recently, which I am actively trying to circumnavigate with the use of paper, of all things!