“They sent me to a doctor an hour and a half away.”

The standards

Under the medical provider network regulations at 8 CCR § 9767.5:

• A primary treating physicianPTP Primary Treating Physician. The doctor directing your care. within 30 minutes or 15 miles of your residence or workplace.
• An occupational health specialist and a specialist within 60 minutes or 30 miles.

There are limited exceptions for rural areas, and an MPN can apply for approval of an alternate standard where the geography genuinely requires it. Los Angeles County is not that.

“The directory says there are twelve doctors near me”

This is the actual problem, and it has a name in the regulations: the network must have providers who are available and accepting new workers’ compensation patients, and it must maintain an accurate list.

A directory full of doctors who have retired, moved, closed to new patients, or never actually joined is not a compliant network. Call them. Write down the date, who you spoke to, and what they said. Three or four of those calls, documented, is evidence.

What to do about it

Ask for the Medical Access Assistant. Every MPN must provide one, and their job is to help you find an available provider and schedule the appointment. Use it and keep the record — either they solve your problem or they document that the network cannot.

Then, if the network cannot deliver: where an MPN fails to provide access to required treatment, you may be permitted to treat outside it at the carrier’s expense. This is fact-specific and it is worth getting right rather than simply going to your own doctor and hoping.

Separate from distance: you can change doctors inside the network

After your first visit inside the network, you are entitled to switch to a different physician within the MPN — you do not need permission and you do not need a reason. The law requires the employer to notify you of “the employee’s right to change treating physicians within the network after the first visit.” (The qualifier is real: the right attaches after that first visit, not before it.)

And if you disagree with your treating physician inside the network, the law gives you a second and then a third opinion within it, and the law then allows an MPN independent medical reviewIMR Independent Medical Review. The appeal from a UR denial. 30 days (10 if the dispute is only over drugs on the MTUS Drug List). of the treatment dispute. Most people never use any of it. How MPNs work.

The travel itself is reimbursable

Mileage to and from treatment is paid — and at the rate in effect on the day you traveled, which changed mid-year in 2026 from 72.5¢ to 76¢. Parking counts. If a trip requires it, a reasonable meal can too.

Keep a log as you go. Mileage reconstructed a year later is what adjusters reject most. Calculate what you’re owed. · What counts.

If the distance is making treatment impossible — if you are missing appointments because you cannot get there — say so in writing, to the adjusterClaims administrator / adjuster The person handling your claim for the insurer or self-insured employer., and keep the copy. A documented access problem is worth far more than an undocumented one.