Croutpurdie: A Doctor Change Did Not Erase Earlier Medical Reports

Changing doctors should not make your earlier medical history disappear. If a specialist documented symptoms or a former treating doctor addressed your ability to work, excluding those reports can leave an incomplete picture of your injury. The reason for excluding a report matters as much as what the report says.

In Croutpurdie v. Global Paratransit, Inc., No. ADJ9435746 (WCAB Aug. 20, 2024), the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board required a fuller record before the disability and injury disputes could be decided. It rescinded a 6 percent permanent-disability award after finding that the judge had improperly excluded consulting physicians’ reports and reports from an earlier treating physician.

The excluded reports concerned disputed injuries and benefits

Sharnee Croutpurdie worked as a driver and claimed injuries from a March 2014 work accident. The judge found industrial injury to her cervical and lumbar spine and awarded temporary disability and 6 percent permanent disability based on the qualified medical evaluator’s reports.

Croutpurdie sought consideration of additional temporary disability and claimed injuries involving her thoracic spine, right shoulder, sleep and bruxism, or teeth grinding. She also argued that permanent disability should be assessed using the reports of her former primary treating physician, Abel Quesada, M.D. Those were claims for the judge to evaluate on an appropriate evidentiary record.

The exhibit history in Croutpurdie supplied an important starting point. Reports from three secondary or consulting physicians had already been admitted without objection in March 2020. At the continued trial in February 2021, the judge excluded those reports, along with two orthopedic reports and Quesada’s earlier reports.

The Board treated the earlier admission as significant: The March 2020 hearing minutes showed that the first group was already part of the record. Reviewing only the final exhibit ruling would have missed that procedural history.

A reporting duty did not justify excluding these consultations

The judge considered the secondary physicians’ reports questionable because their findings had not been incorporated into the primary treating physician’s reports. The cited regulation assigns the primary treating physician responsibility for obtaining and addressing secondary physicians’ reports.

But the Board’s reporting-rule analysis in Croutpurdie distinguished that duty from a basis for excluding the reports. It found no supporting case or statute for treating failure to incorporate the findings as making these reports inadmissible. It also found no evidence that the consultations had been obtained contrary to the applicable law.

The reporting obligation still has a purpose. Under 8 CCR section 9785(e)(4), the primary treating physician must obtain secondary physicians’ reports and, unless good cause is shown, incorporate or comment on their findings within 20 days of receipt and submit the reports to the claims administrator. A missing discussion may need to be addressed in the medical reporting. That is different from removing the underlying report from the evidentiary record for the reason rejected here.

There is also a distinction between considering a report and relying on it to support an award. Labor Code section 4605 allows consulting or attending physicians at the worker’s expense, while providing that reports obtained under that section cannot be the sole basis of a compensation award. It requires a qualified medical evaluator or authorized treating physician to address the report and explain agreement or disagreement.

The Board recognized that limit while directing admission of the relevant reports. The record could include them so their findings could be evaluated, rather than treating admission itself as proof of the additional benefits Croutpurdie sought.

Changing doctors did not erase the earlier reports

The judge also questioned Quesada’s status as an earlier primary treating physician. The rule permits only one primary treating physician at a time. The Board found no evidence that Croutpurdie had been seeing another primary treating physician while Quesada served in that role.

The discussion of the former doctor’s reports in Croutpurdie explained why a later replacement did not invalidate the earlier reports. They remained relevant medical evidence. Uncertainty about the former doctor’s present status did not justify excluding the reports from the period when he treated the worker.

The panel expressly set medical-provider-network issues aside in discussing replacement. For a current doctor-change request, the applicable selection and dispute procedures still need separate review. Our guide to changing MPN doctors and transferring records addresses that different task. Here, the problem was whether the judge should consider the former doctor’s existing reports.

The late petition and the Board’s own motion were separate

The result included a procedural distinction that matters when reading the order. The Board found Croutpurdie’s petition for reconsideration untimely. It identified April 19, 2021 as the filing deadline on this record; the petition was filed in the Electronic Adjudication Management System on April 26.

The timeliness discussion in Croutpurdie explained that the Board had instead granted reconsideration on its own motion under Labor Code section 5900(b). That statute allows the Board to grant reconsideration on its own motion within 60 days after filing of the judge’s decision and accompanying report. The worker’s late petition and the Board’s own action were separate.

The formal order in Croutpurdie therefore both dismissed the petition and rescinded the judge’s findings and award, returning the case for further proceedings. The dismissal did not mean that the excluded reports stayed out or that the 6 percent award remained final. Nor was the petition treated as timely. A worker concerned about an exclusion or benefit decision should have counsel review the decision and service record promptly.

The returned case required a decision on the fuller record

The Board connected the admission rulings to a fair hearing. Relying on Rucker v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, 82 Cal.App.4th 151, 157–158 (2000), it explained that workers’ compensation proceedings must provide due process, including an opportunity to present and test relevant evidence.

In the directions for the returned case in Croutpurdie, the Board required further analysis of temporary disability, permanent disability and the additional claimed body parts after the reports were included. The case returned for that assessment; the order did not award a particular higher disability rating or decide that all claimed conditions were industrial.

That sequence is the practical value of the decision. First establish which reports belong in the record and why. Then evaluate whether their medical findings and reasoning support the disputed injuries or benefits. Our Valdez analysis explains the related statutory role of non-network treatment reports.

Keep the report history and the hearing record together

Keep complete copies of the former and current treating physicians’ reports, specialist consultations and evaluator reports. Identify who treated you during each period, which findings were later addressed and whether the reports were sent to the appropriate participants. If a doctor’s role changed, preserve the records showing when it changed.

For counsel’s review, include the hearing minutes, exhibit lists, written objections and the judge’s stated reasons for exclusion. In this case, the earlier minutes established that several reports had already been admitted. The full record also showed that the former treating physician’s reports could not be excluded merely because a different doctor later took over.