What happens after the QME report? The rating, the advances, the offer and the DOR

What happens after the QME report? The answer in order

Seven steps after the report, and each one waits on something you can name.

The report is the start of the second half. Most of what is written about the Qualified Medical EvaluatorQME Qualified Medical Evaluator. A state-certified physician who resolves disputes. Unrepresented workers get a panel of three by random draw., the QME, stops at the exam or at the 30 days the evaluator has to write the report. That is where the medical question ends. The money question starts there: the report becomes a number, the number becomes weeks and dollars, and the dollars are either paid by agreement or decided by a judge.

Seven steps, in the order they come:

1. The report is served. Within 30 days of the exam, on both sides.
2. It is rated. By the Disability Evaluation Unit if you have no lawyer, by the two sides if you do.
3. The advances begin. If temporary disability has ended, within 14 days of its last check.
4. The report is fixed, if it needs fixing. A correction, a supplemental report or a deposition of the evaluator.
5. An offer comes, or it does not. Nothing in the rules schedules one.
6. A Declaration of Readiness is filed. By either side, and it sets the calendar.
7. The settlement conference. Most cases end there, and the record closes there.

Nothing in that list moves by itself. A case with no Declaration of Readiness on file is not scheduled for anything and will not be. That is the single most useful fact about the months after the report: the next date is set by a filing, not by the passage of time.

Sent to a QME? From the panel to the report

What the report decides, and the 30 days it arrives in

One document answers the medical questions the money is built from.

The 30 days. The evaluator has 30 days from the day you were seen to complete and serve the report. An extension is asked for on QME Form 112, no later than five days before the 30 days run out, and it is not available because records are missing: the evaluator reports on what it has. A report that is late can be objected to in writing before it is served, and the objection matters only if it comes first.

What it decides. In a contested claim, the report answers six questions, and each one controls money:

• Is the injury work-related? The AOE/COE question, arising out of and in the course of employment: whether there is a claim at all.
• Are you permanent and stationaryP&S / MMI Permanent and Stationary / Maximum Medical Improvement. Your condition has plateaued — not that you are healed. Temporary disability ends here.? Also called maximum medical improvement, MMI. It ends temporary disability and starts the permanent disability clock.
• What is your whole person impairmentWPI — Whole Person Impairment The percentage from the AMA Guides that a rating is built from. Extremity percent is not whole person percent: 100% upper extremity = 60% whole person, 100% lower extremity = 40%. This is the most common source of confusion in a rating.? The number that becomes a permanent disability percentage, then weeks, then dollars.
• How much is apportioned? How much of the disability comes from this injury rather than an earlier one or another cause. This is usually where the largest sums are lost.
• What are your work restrictions? They decide whether your job can take you back, and whether the voucher is owed.
• Do you need future medical care? Whether treatment stays covered, or what it is worth if it is bought out.

What it starts. A finding that you are permanent and stationary is the hinge. Temporary disability stops, and the permanent disability that remains can be measured, rated and paid. If the report says you are not yet permanent and stationary, the second half waits: treatment and temporary disability go on, within their limits, until you are.

How to read your medical-legal report

Who turns the report into a rating, and how long it takes

Two routes to the same number, and they differ by whether you have a lawyer.

Without a lawyer: the summary rating. The Disability Evaluation Unit is the state office that rates medical reports. For a worker without a lawyer, the unit issues a summary rating. Once it has a complete package, it must calculate and serve the rating within 20 days. The rating is a line of six numbers, a rating stringRating string The row of numbers encoding your entire permanent disability calculation. Checkable arithmetic., ending in your permanent disability percentage.

The two 30-day clocks. You have 30 days from receiving the QME’s report to ask the evaluator, on QME Form 37, to correct factual errors in it. Separately, you have 30 days from receiving the summary rating to ask the Division of Workers’ Compensation, in writing, to reconsider it, for one of four limited reasons. Disagreeing with the doctor’s conclusions is not one of them. A rating can be arithmetic done right on a report that is wrong, and the two clocks are for those two different problems.

With a lawyer: each side rates it. The Division of Workers’ Compensation says workers with attorneys cannot request reconsideration of a summary rating; a lawyer presents the dispute to a judge instead. In practice each side rates the report, and if the case goes to a settlement conference, each side’s proposed permanent disability rating is written into the papers the judge reads. Where the only dispute left is the number, there is a conference for exactly that: a rating mandatory settlement conferenceMSC Mandatory Settlement Conference. Where most cases end — and where discovery closes..

What a point is worth. The percentage converts into weeks, in bands that grow as the rating climbs, and the weeks are paid at $160 to $290 a week for an injury in 2014 or later. An illustrative 15% rating is 50.50 weeks, $14,645 at the $290 maximum. Between 15% and 24.75%, each point is 5 weeks, $1,450. A point lost in the rating is real money, and it is invisible unless someone does the arithmetic.

Reading the string itself. The six fields, the 1.4, the occupational group and the age adjustment each have their own article. The point here is when the number arrives and who produces it.

What your permanent disability rating means, number by number

The checks while you wait: permanent disability advances

The rating takes weeks. The checks are not supposed to wait for it.

Within 14 days of the last temporary check. If you have a permanent disability, the first permanent disability payment is due within 14 days after the last temporary disability payment, and it is paid every 14 days after that. That clock does not wait for the rating, the offer or the judge. It runs from the end of temporary disability.

They are advances. These payments are advances against the permanent disability you will be awarded or settle for, paid before anyone has agreed on the final rating, and they count against it. When the case settles, the advances already paid are credited against the award. Overstated advances are one of the most common quiet errors in a settlement, so keep your own record of every check.

The rate is usually lower. Permanent disability is paid between $160 and $290 a week, figures frozen since January 1, 2014. A worker whose temporary disability was $600 a week will usually see $290, or $580 every two weeks.

The exception for work at your wage. If your employer offers you work that pays at least 85% of your wages and benefits, or you are already working at 100% or more of what you earned before, the advances can wait. In that case, the state’s guidebook says, the permanent disability is not paid until a judge approves a settlement of your case.

A gap carries the 10%. A permanent disability payment that is not made on time is increased by 10%, paid without application. If temporary disability has ended, more than 14 days have passed and nothing has come, with no letter explaining why, the payment is late on a schedule already written.

When does workers’ comp start paying? Every check, dated

When the report is wrong: fix it before anything is filed

Three tools, each with its own clock, and all of them work best early.

Without a lawyer: the correction request. On QME Form 37, within 30 days of receiving the report, served on the evaluator, the claims administratorClaims administrator / adjuster The person handling your claim for the insurer or self-insured employer. and the Disability Evaluation Unit. The evaluator then has 10 days to decide whether corrections are needed and to say whether they change any opinion, or 15 days if the claims administrator asked too. It is for factual errors: a wrong history, a missing body part, a misread record.

With a lawyer: the supplemental report. Either side can send the evaluator new records or new questions and ask for a supplemental report. It is due within 60 days of the request, and the deadline can be extended by 30 days by agreement. A supplemental report is also the step the rules expect before anyone asks for a second evaluator in another specialty.

The deposition. The evaluator can be cross-examined under oath at a deposition, paid for by the employer, and must make himself or herself available within 120 days of the notice. An apportionment opinion is the usual target. Under EscobedoEscobedo The en banc decision requiring an apportionment opinion to explain how and why. A percentage without reasoning is not substantial evidence. v. Marshalls, an en banc decision of the Appeals Board in 2005, a doctor who blames part of a disability on something other than the work injury has to explain how and why, and a percentage with no reasoning is not substantial evidenceSubstantial evidence The standard a medical opinion must meet to support a finding..

Why the order matters. Each of these tools adds weeks, sometimes months, and each of them has to be finished before the record closes. The record closes at the mandatory settlement conference, and the conference is set by a Declaration of Readiness. A report that needs fixing should be fixed before a Declaration of Readiness is filed, not after.

I don’t agree with the QME report

How long after the QME until a settlement offer?

Often weeks or months, and sometimes never: no rule makes anyone offer.

No deadline for an offer. Nothing in the deadlines that follow a QME report requires the claims administrator to make a settlement offer by any date. An offer often follows once the report is rated, because both sides can then see the number. But a quiet file after the rating is not a sign that something is wrong with the system. It is the system: nothing happens until someone asks for it to happen.

The two kinds of offer. A settlement is one of two things. In a Compromise and ReleaseC&R — Compromise and Release A lump sum that closes future medical treatment permanently. you take a lump sum, and future medical care for the injury is bought out and closed. In Stipulations with Request for AwardStips — Stipulations with Request for Award An agreed percentage paid over time, with future medical left open, and reopening available within five years of the date of injury. These are not two prices for the same thing. you agree on the permanent disability percentage, it is paid every two weeks, your future medical care stays open, and you keep the right to reopen within five years of the date of injury if your condition worsens. The permanent disability money is the same under both. What differs is future medical care and the right to reopen, and that difference is permanent.

Not before the rating. You cannot know what the case is worth before the rating exists, and a case settled before every body part is rated leaves that body part out of the number. An offer that arrives before the report is final, or before the rating, is an offer on a number that has not been measured.

A judge approves it. No settlement is valid until a workers’ compensation judge approves it, and the judge must decide that it is adequate, not merely that both sides signed. The Appeals Board confirmed that in Gaines v. ABM Aviation, an en banc decision of 2026.

A workers’ comp settlement offer, read line by line

No offer, or a bad one: the Declaration of Readiness

The filing that sets the calendar, and the 10 days it gives the other side.

What it is. A Declaration of Readiness to Proceed, often called a DOR, is a filing by either side saying the case is ready for a conference or a trial. It needs a case at the Appeals Board: the Application for Adjudication opens the case, the defendant answers, a medical-legal evaluation builds the record, and a Declaration of Readiness sets the conference. Even with a case on file, hearings are not scheduled automatically.

The calendar it sets. The mandatory settlement conference is set 10 to 30 days after the Declaration of Readiness, and trial within 75 days of it if the case does not resolve.

The 10 days to object. A party served with a Declaration of Readiness has 10 calendar days to object. The regulation says a party who does not object “shall be deemed to have waived any and all objections to proceeding on the issues specified in the declaration, absent extraordinary circumstances.” Ten days, and the waiver is broad.

Who should file it, and when. A Declaration of Readiness filed on a complete record moves a case that was sitting. Filed on an incomplete one, it starts the clock toward the day the record closes. That is why the order in this article matters: report, rating, fixes, then the filing. And if the other side files first while your record still needs work, the 10 days are when to say so.

The next date in your case is set by a filing, not by the passage of time.

Why is my case taking years?

The settlement conference, where discovery closes

Most cases end here, and the ones that do not are decided on what was listed here.

Where most cases end. The mandatory settlement conference, the MSC, is where most cases resolve. It is held remotely, by video, in front of a judge who reads what the two sides bring. Treat it as court: somewhere quiet, on time, not driving.

Why it is the hour that matters most. The Labor Code puts it in one sentence: “Discovery shall close on the date of the mandatory settlement conference.” Evidence not disclosed or obtained by then is generally not admissible at trial, unless it could not have been discovered with due diligence. A missing supplemental report, an evaluator nobody deposed, an unclaimed body part or an unexplained apportionment becomes permanent there.

What is written down. The two sides complete a joint Pretrial Conference Statement setting out the issues, what they agree on, each side’s proposed permanent disability rating, every witness and every exhibit, with the author, date and title of each document. Whatever is not on the exhibit list does not come in at trial.

If it does not settle. Trial is before a workers’ compensation judge, in person, with no jury. The evidence is mostly documents, live testimony is usually short, and the case is not decided from the bench: the judge issues written findings afterward. A worker who loses has 20 days to petition for reconsideration of a final order.

What actually happens at a hearing or trial

One case after the report, dated

An illustrative case, counted from the morning of the exam.

The facts (illustrative). The forklift operator hurt her right knee at the warehouse in Ontario. Her claim was accepted, and her temporary disability was $600 a week, $1,200 every two weeks. Her treating doctor and the claims administrator disagreed about her impairment, she had no lawyer, and she chose her evaluator from a panel of three. She was examined on Tuesday, January 13, 2026.

The report. Thirty days from the exam was Thursday, February 12, 2026. The report was served on Tuesday, February 10. It found her permanent and stationary, stated her whole person impairment for the knee, explained its apportionment, and set restrictions on kneeling and climbing. She read it that week, found her history right, and did not need Form 37.

The last temporary check, and the first advance. Her last temporary disability check came on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. The first permanent disability advance was due within 14 days, by Tuesday, March 3, 2026, at $290 a week, $580 every two weeks.

The rating. The Disability Evaluation Unit had the complete package on Thursday, February 19, 2026, so the summary rating was due within 20 days, by Wednesday, March 11. It was served on time, and it reached her on Thursday, March 12: 15% permanent disability, 50.50 weeks, $14,645. Her 30 days to ask for reconsideration ran to Saturday, April 11, 2026. The arithmetic was right, and she did not ask.

The quiet month. No offer came in March or in the first weeks of April. Nothing was wrong. Nobody had asked for a date.

The Declaration of Readiness. With the record complete, a Declaration of Readiness was filed on Monday, April 13, 2026. The claims administrator’s 10 days to object ran to Thursday, April 23. The conference had to be set between 10 and 30 days out, by Wednesday, May 13, and it was set for Tuesday, May 12, 2026. Had it not settled, trial was due within 75 days of the filing, by Saturday, June 27, 2026.

The conference. At the conference the two sides agreed on 15% by Stipulations with Request for Award, with her future medical care for the knee left open, and the judge approved it as adequate. The advances already paid were credited against the award, and the rest of the weeks were paid every two weeks after.

What would have changed it. Had the report left out the hip she had started favoring, Form 37 or a new evaluation would have come first, and the Declaration of Readiness later. Had she been rated 70% or more, a life pension would have been part of the number. Had her employer offered her work at her full wage, the advances could have waited for the judge’s approval.

When you do not need a lawyer for this

The route without a lawyer is built to be walked alone, and the state helps for free.

Many workers do this alone. The summary rating, the correction request and the reconsideration request are written for workers without lawyers. The forms are free. The Division of Workers’ Compensation’s Information and Assistance officers help workers who do not have a lawyer, at no cost, at every stage, and the state publishes a numbered guide for objecting to a summary rating. If the claim is accepted, the report reads as accurate to you, one body part is involved and the advances arrive on time, you may not need anyone to take you through the second half.

When a consultation is worth having. When the report apportions part of your disability to an earlier injury or condition; when it leaves out a body part; when the rating is close to a line where the weeks per point change, or near 70%; when the advances have not started weeks after temporary disability ended; when a Declaration of Readiness has been served on you and the record is not complete; or when an offer has come and you cannot tell whether it is a Compromise and Release or Stipulations. A consultation with this office costs nothing, and if there is nothing worth doing, we will tell you that.

When you don’t need a lawyer, and what changes the answer

A file to keep after the report:

• The QME report — The date it was served on you, and the date you received it.
• The rating — The rating string, the percentage, and the date it reached you.
• The last temporary disability check — Its date and amount, to count the 14 days to the first advance.
• Every advance — The date and amount of each permanent disability check, so the credit at settlement can be checked.
• Anything you sent the evaluator — Form 37, a request for a supplemental report, and the date of each.
• Any Declaration of Readiness — The date it was served on you, and the date 10 days later.