Duplication in Old Schedule Rating (California)

[Harold]

The applicant in this case has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. The orthopedic doctor gave a restriction to semi-sedentary work due to the fibromyalgia. The pscyhe report rated to 58% which was due to the fibromyalgia pain causing the work function impairments. For settlement purposes, would there be any overlap/duplication between these reports?
Thanks for your time.

[ozzie]

The post is rather old, but I'll offer my thoughts: even as a defense attorney, I do NOT see any overlap. Fibromyalgia is essentially a bodily disease; the psychiatric impairment appears to be indicative of a mental reaction to that bodily disease, and I think most WCJ's would make that same conclusion.

I do see the argument that both are really simply manifestations of the same thing, i.e., pain; and since pain is the result of brain function in reading the nerve signals, and so is the psychiatric impairment, the same impairment is really getting rated twice.

Seems to me the solution is to create an analogy to, say, a back injury, or a broken arm, or perhaps a bad burn, which of course creates pain. But the mind is then affected by the pain, creating a purely psychological result in addition to the physical injury. There is clearly two ratable components in this example; same, I believe, would apply to the question you pose.

[Harold]

Thank you for your response.