Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes on Wednesday announced new legislation, spurred by the Dec. 2, 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, expanding treatment services for victims injured in terrorist attacks while on the job.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB44 into law on Friday, Oct. 13. The legislation, introduced by Reyes, D-San Bernardino, when she took office a year after the attack, requires employers to immediately provide employees injured in an act of terrorism a nurse case manager and information of the treatment options available.
“Months after the December 2nd attack in San Bernardino, survivors faced unacceptable delays and denials for critical medical treatment,” Reyes said in a statement Wednesday. “AB 44 is a small but important step to ensure that workers injured in an act of terrorism receive the proper attention they deserve in the workers’ compensation system.”
The new law mandates that treatment, whether medical or psychological, be provided by trained and qualified healthcare professionals. But the provisions of the law are only applicable if the governor declares a state of emergency in connection with the act of terrorism, as was the case in the San Bernardino mass shooting.
The shooting, committed by county health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, left 14 people dead and 22 wounded during a holiday luncheon/training seminar at the Inland Regional Center. Farook and Malik, both said by the FBI to be radicalized Muslims, were killed in a shootout with police hours after the attack.
Since Reyes introduced the bill, it has undergone seven rounds of amendments. Among the provisions stripped from the bill included a proposal to bypass the utilization review process employers and workers compensation claims administrators use to determine what treatment to provide employees, said Galen Dobbins, a legislative aide for Reyes.
Survivors of the attack and their advocates expressed disappointment with the new legislation, saying it didn’t go far enough, but commended Reyes for her strong efforts in getting the legislation passed and going to bat for the San Bernardino shooting victims.
“She really did try as much as she could. The original bill she introduced was awesome,” said Geraldine Ly, a workers compensation attorney representing nine of the San Bernardino shooting victims in claims against the county. “The original language has been butchered.”
She said the gutting of key bill provisions originally introduced by Reyes, including the ability for employers to bypass the utilization review process, left the legislation without teeth. The only thing the law adds, Ly said, is it makes it mandatory, instead of optional, for a nurse case manager to be immediately assigned to an employee who is a victim of a terrorist attack.
Robert Fredericks, a Redlands-based insurance services specialist and advocate for the San Bernardino victims, expressed “deep disappointment” that the utilization review provision was stripped from the original draft of the bill. He said it was a key reason so many survivors of the shooting were denied or delayed treatment for up to a year.
“The county steadfastly maintained that it could not override utilization review despite being informed in early December 2016 by the California Department of Industrial Relations that the (Dec. 2, 2015) shooting was historically unique, required ‘extraordinary action,’ and advised that (utilization review) could be overridden,” Fredericks said in an email Wednesday.
Shooting victim Tracie Thompson would have liked to have seen the 104-week maximum for receiving workers compensation benefits extended under the new law.
“Once you’ve been victimized by something like this, it shouldn’t be so hard to get help,” said Thompson, 51, of Devore, in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Thompson, who was shot in the right leg and still has bullet fragments lodged in it, said she hasn’t been able to return to work, although she has tried.
“I made an attempt, but I’m still having issues,” said Thompson, a 26-year county employee.
Like Thompson, Ly said many employees of the county’s Environmental Health Services Division have been so traumatized they cannot return to work, and some have taken medical retirements.
San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert issued a statement Wednesday, saying Reyes’ AB44 “modeled itself on the process created by the county to care for those who were injured on (Dec. 2, 2015).”
“The county provided all of the employees who were physically injured with the immediate services of nurse case managers and counseled them on the medical treatment options that were available to them,” Wert said. “The county eventually extended those services to other employees who were being treated through worker’s compensation.”
