Guide
The deadlines a California workers’ comp applicant firm tracks
A workers’ comp file runs on clocks: some belong to the applicant firm, some to the carrier, and some to the evaluator or the Board. This is the set an applicant-side firm has to watch, grouped by phase, with the trigger, the length, the statute or regulation, and what happens when the date passes. The counting rules at the top change the real date more often than the statutes do.
Three counting rules that apply to every row
- Exclude the trigger day. Day 1 is the day after service or the event (8 CCR §10600(a)).
- Add the service extension first. Mail, fax or email to a California address adds 5 calendar days; elsewhere in the United States 10; outside it 20 (8 CCR §10605). The WCAB rule treats email like mail, unlike civil court.
- Then roll forward. A last day that lands on a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday when the WCAB is closed moves to the next business day (8 CCR §10600(b)). Court holidays follow the Judicial Council list; Lunar New Year, Admission Day, Columbus Day and December 31 are not court holidays.
“Working days” (LC §5401) exclude weekends and holidays; “business days” (8 CCR §31.3, LC §4610) exclude weekends. Where a statute says only “days”, count calendar days. Abbreviations: QME (Qualified Medical Evaluator), UR (utilization review), IMR (independent medical review), TD and PD (temporary and permanent disability), DOR (Declaration of Readiness to Proceed), MSC (mandatory settlement conference), MPN (medical provider network), LC (Labor Code), CCR (California Code of Regulations, Title 8).
1. The claim
Mostly the carrier’s clocks, but the applicant firm watches them because each one that lapses is a benefit or a penalty.
| Deadline | Clock | Runs from | Authority | If it passes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee reports the injury to the employer | 30 days | Date of injury, or the date the employee knew it was work-related | LC §5400 | Late notice can bar the claim only if the employer shows it was prejudiced (LC §5403). |
| Employer gives the employee a DWC-1 claim form | 1 working day | Employer’s knowledge of an injury with lost time or treatment beyond first aid | LC §5401(a) | Penalties; the claim is not barred. |
| Claims administrator accepts or denies | 90 days (75 for presumption injuries) | Filing of the DWC-1 | LC §5402(b) | Injury is presumed compensable; the denial must actually be issued inside the period. |
| Treatment during the delay period | Within 1 working day of the DWC-1, up to $10,000 | Filing of the DWC-1 | LC §5402(c) | Treatment the carrier owes whether or not it later denies the claim. |
2. Medical-legal: from objection to QME report
These are the clocks that decide who the evaluator is and what the evaluator reads. Most of them are the applicant firm’s to run.
| Deadline | Clock | Runs from | Authority | If it passes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Object to the treating physician’s report | 20 days (represented); 30 days (unrepresented) | Receipt of the report; +5 when mailed | LC §4062(a); LC §4061 for PD; 8 CCR §10605 | No panel on that determination; the report stands as medical evidence. Extendable for good cause or by agreement. |
| Earliest panel request | First working day at least 10 days after mailing (15 in practice) | Mailing of the objection or the LC §4060 request | LC §4062.2(b); 8 CCR §30 | A premature request is rejected by the Medical Unit. The requesting party picks the specialty. |
| Serve the panel on the other side | 1 working day | Generating the panel online | 8 CCR §30(b)(1)(C) | WCAB panels have found late or incomplete service invalidates the panel. |
| Strike one name | 10 days; usually 15 for the party served by mail | Assignment (statute) or service (regulation) of the panel | LC §4062.2(c); 8 CCR §30(b); 8 CCR §10605 | The other side may select any remaining physician. Use the right promptly. |
| Schedule the exam | 10 business days | Selection of the QME | 8 CCR §31.3(d); LC §4062.2(d) | The claims administrator may schedule it instead. |
| Exam must be available | 90 days, or 120 if the scheduling party waives | The appointment request | 8 CCR §31.3(e); §31.5(a)(2) | Ground for a replacement QME. |
| Serve records on the other side before they go to the QME | 20 days | Measured back from the day the records go to the evaluator | LC §4062.3(b); 8 CCR §35(c) | Sending them anyway is an ex parte communication: new QME at your cost (LC §4062.3(g), (h)). |
| Object to non-medical records | 10 days | Service of the records | LC §4062.3(b); 8 CCR §35(d) | The records go to the evaluator. Medical records cannot be blocked by objection. |
| Serve the advocacy letter | 20 days | Measured back from the evaluation date | LC §4062.3(e) | A letter the other side did not get in time is ex parte. |
| QME report | 30 days; +30 for pending tests, +15 for good cause | The evaluation | 8 CCR §38(a), (c) | Late with no extension: either party may request a replacement QME (§38(b)). |
| Supplemental report | 60 days; parties may agree to 30 more | The written request, with any new records already served | 8 CCR §38(i) | Reported to the Medical Director; grounds for discipline, not a party remedy. |
3. Treatment: utilization review and IMR
The carrier’s clocks again, but the applicant firm tracks them because a late UR decision is the applicant’s best argument and a missed IMR filing is the applicant’s loss.
| Deadline | Clock | Runs from | Authority | If it passes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UR decision on a prospective request | 5 working days; up to 14 days if more information is needed | Receipt of the request for authorization | LC §4610(i); 8 CCR §9792.9.1 | An untimely UR decision is not valid; the treatment dispute goes to the WCAB, not IMR (Dubon II). |
| Expedited UR decision | 72 hours | Receipt of the information needed | LC §4610(i) | Same. |
| Apply for independent medical review | 30 days | Service of the UR decision | LC §4610.5; 8 CCR §9792.10.1 | The UR denial stands for that request. |
| Carrier response to an LC §4600 physician designation | No statutory clock outside an MPN | The designation letter | LC §4600; 8 CCR §§9767.6, 9767.9 when an MPN is asserted | Escalate with a DOR for an expedited hearing; it must be heard within 30 days (LC §5502(b)). |
4. Benefits
Each late payment carries its own penalty, which is why the dates are worth logging.
| Deadline | Clock | Runs from | Authority | If it passes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First temporary disability payment | 14 days | Employer’s knowledge of the injury and the disability | LC §4650(a) | Automatic 10% increase on the late amount (LC §4650(d)); up to 25% more for unreasonable delay (LC §5814). |
| Later TD and PD payments | Every 14 days | The first payment | LC §4650(c) | Same penalties. |
| First permanent disability payment | 14 days | The last TD payment | LC §4650(b) | Same penalties. Not owed before an award if the employer has offered work at 85% of wages or the employee earns 100%. |
| Temporary disability cap | 104 weeks within 5 years of injury; 240 weeks for listed serious injuries | Date of injury | LC §4656(c) | TD ends; PD advances and the rating take over. |
| Offer of regular, modified or alternative work | 60 days | Receipt of the report finding the employee permanent and stationary | LC §4658.7(b); 8 CCR §10133.31 | The employee is owed the supplemental job displacement voucher, issued within 20 days after the 60 run out. |
5. At the Appeals Board
Statutory targets; district offices often run later, but the clocks that bind the parties are strict.
| Deadline | Clock | Runs from | Authority | If it passes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Object to a Declaration of Readiness to Proceed | 10 days | Service of the DOR | 8 CCR §10744 | Objections to proceeding are waived absent extraordinary circumstances. |
| Mandatory settlement conference | 10 to 30 days | Filing of the DOR | LC §5502(d)(1) | Discovery closes at the MSC (LC §5502(d)(3)); anything not disclosed by then is out unless it could not have been found with diligence. |
| Expedited hearing (treatment, MPN, TD, medical-legal appointment) | 30 days | Filing of the DOR | LC §5502(b) | A decision is due within the same 30 days. |
| Trial | 75 days | Filing of the DOR | LC §5502(d)(1) | Target, not a party deadline. |
| Petition for reconsideration | 20 days; 25 when served by mail in California | Service of the final order, decision or award | LC §5903; 8 CCR §10605 | Jurisdictional: a late petition is dismissed. The Board must act within 60 days or it is deemed denied (LC §5909). |
| Petition for writ of review | 45 days | The Board’s decision on reconsideration, or the deemed denial | LC §5950 | Appellate review is barred. |
6. The statutes of limitation
The two dates that sit on every file from intake.
| Deadline | Clock | Runs from | Authority | If it passes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File the claim | 1 year | Date of injury, or the last benefit furnished, whichever is later | LC §5405; LC §5412 for cumulative trauma | The claim is barred. Filing the DWC-1 and each benefit paid restart or toll the year. |
| New and further disability | 5 years | Date of injury | LC §5410 | The Board loses jurisdiction to award more compensation. Protect it with a timely petition to reopen. |
| Death benefits | 1 year from death, and within 240 weeks of injury | Date of death; date of injury | LC §5406 | The dependents’ claim is barred. |
Which of these the firm actually controls
Of the rows above, the ones the applicant firm can miss on its own are the objection to the treating report, the panel request date, the strike, scheduling the exam, the 20-day service of records and the advocacy letter, the IMR application, the DOR objection, reconsideration, the writ, and the two statutes. Everything else is someone else’s clock that the firm watches so it can act the day it lapses: a late UR decision, a late first TD payment, a denial issued on day 91, a QME report with no extension on day 31.
- The strike and the 20-day records rule are the two that most often go wrong in practice, because each depends on a service date on a document the firm did not send. See the panel QME strike guide and the QME records packet guide.
- The five-year statute is the one that costs the most when missed, and it is the one that sits quietly for years on a settled file with open future medical.
How Amber handles this
Amber is an AI agent for California workers’ comp firms. It reads each case’s documents and email as they arrive and computes these dates from the documents themselves: the service date on a panel, the mailing date on a treating report, the exam date on a QME appointment letter, the date of injury on the application. For each case it:
- Keeps the objection, panel request, strike, scheduling and records-service clocks current for both sides, with the mail days and the court-day roll applied.
- Flags the carrier’s lapses the day they happen: a UR decision past day 5, a first TD payment past day 14, a QME report past day 30 with no extension.
- Drafts the next document from the firm’s templates when a clock turns: the objection letter, the panel request, the strike or unilateral selection, the records index and advocacy letter, the DOR.
- Leaves everything as a draft for attorney review. Nothing is filed or served until the attorney approves it.
Questions
How long do I have to object to a treating physician's report in a represented California workers' comp case?
Twenty days from receipt of the report under Labor Code section 4062(a) when the employee is represented, 30 days when unrepresented. The time may be extended for good cause or by agreement. If you do not object, you cannot request a QME panel on that determination, and the report stands as medical evidence.
When is the earliest a QME panel can be requested?
Under Labor Code section 4062.2(b), no earlier than the first working day that is at least 10 days after the date the objection or section 4060 request was mailed. Because the other side gets 5 extra days for mail service under 8 CCR section 10605, the DWC Medical Unit treats a request made before 15 days have passed as premature and rejects it.
How long does a QME have to write the report?
Thirty days from the evaluation under 8 CCR section 38(a). The Medical Director can grant up to 30 more days when test results or a consulting report are outstanding, or 15 days for good cause such as a medical emergency, if the evaluator asks at least 5 days before the 30 days run out. If the report is late with no extension, either party may request a replacement QME under section 31.5. A supplemental report is due 60 days after a written request.
How soon after a Declaration of Readiness is the mandatory settlement conference?
Labor Code section 5502(d)(1) requires the mandatory settlement conference to be held not less than 10 and not more than 30 days after the DOR is filed, and the trial within 75 days after the DOR is filed if the case does not resolve. District offices often run later than that, but those are the statutory targets. Discovery closes on the date of the MSC.
What is the deadline for a petition for reconsideration?
Twenty days from service of the final order, decision or award under Labor Code section 5903, plus 5 days when served by mail to a California address under 8 CCR section 10605. The deadline is jurisdictional; a late petition is dismissed regardless of the merits.
How do the +5 mail days and the weekend rule work together?
Add the service extension first, then roll forward. 8 CCR section 10605 adds 5 calendar days when a document is served by mail, fax or email to a California address, 10 elsewhere in the United States and 20 outside it. Then, if the last day falls on a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday when the WCAB is closed, 8 CCR section 10600(b) moves it to the next business day. Exclude the trigger day and count from the next day.
Sources
- Labor Code §4062 (objection to the treating physician’s determination)
- Labor Code §4062.2 (panel request, strike, scheduling in represented cases)
- Labor Code §4062.3 (records, advocacy letters, ex parte communication)
- Labor Code §5502 (hearings, MSC, expedited hearing, trial)
- Labor Code §4650 (payment of temporary and permanent disability)
- Labor Code §§5903, 5950 (reconsideration, writ of review)
- Labor Code §§5405, 5410 (statutes of limitation)
- 8 CCR §§30–38, QME regulations (DIR)
- 8 CCR §10600 and §10605, counting time and service extensions (DIR)
- 8 CCR §10744, objection to a declaration of readiness (DIR)
- California court holidays (Judicial Council)
Last updated October 30, 2026. This guide is general information for practitioners, not legal advice. Statutes and regulations change and district offices vary; check the current text and your local office’s practice before relying on a date.