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Paste your rating stringRating string The row of numbers encoding your entire permanent disability calculation. Checkable arithmetic. above. The tool explains all six segments, checks the arithmetic, and converts the final percentage into weeks and dollars — adding the life pensionLife pension Payable at 70%–99% after the PD award is exhausted. § 4659(a): 1.5% of average weekly earnings per point above 60 — with earnings capped at $515.38 since 2006. where the rating is 70% or above.
What a rating string is
Every rated California workers’ compensation case produces a line that looks like this:
15.03.01.00 – 8 – [1.4]11 – 340G – 13 – 15
It is the single most important line of text in your file, because it is where a medical finding becomes a percentage and a percentage becomes money. It appears on the rating produced by the Disability Evaluation UnitDEU Disability Evaluation Unit. Produces formal ratings from medical reports., and often inside your doctor’s report.
Almost nobody explains it to the person it belongs to. Here is what the six segments mean:
| Segment | Example | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Impairment number | 15.03.01.00 | The body part and method, from the AMA Guides, 5th Edition — here, lumbar spine by the DRE method |
| Whole person impairment | 8 | The doctor’s finding, as a percentage of the whole person |
| Future earning capacity adjustment | [1.4]11 | The multiplier applied to the impairment, and the result |
| Occupational group and variant | 340G | Your job’s group number and the variant letter that adjusts for it |
| After occupational adjustment | 13 | The percentage after your occupation is accounted for |
| Final permanent disability | 15 | The percentage after the age adjustment — the number that pays |
Where a rating string can be argued
Three of the six segments are contestable, and two of them are contested routinely.
The impairment number and the 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.. If the Guides produce an impairment that does not fairly reflect what happened to you, Almaraz/GuzmanAlmaraz/Guzman The doctrine permitting a physician to depart from the strict AMA rating where it does not accurately reflect the impairment, using another method inside the “four corners” of the Guides. permits a physician to rate within the four corners of the Guides by an alternative method and explain why. A successfully repaired rotator cuff that rates zero is the classic example.
ApportionmentApportionment Dividing permanent disability between industrial and non-industrial causes. It is to disability, not to findings on an image.. What is missing from a rating string is often more valuable than what is in it. A physician must apportion between industrial and non-industrial causes, and an apportionment opinion that simply says “50% degenerative” without the reasoning EscobedoEscobedo The en banc decision requiring an apportionment opinion to explain how and why. A percentage without reasoning is not substantial evidence. requires is not substantial medical evidence.
The occupational group. Group 340 and group 380 produce materially different money from the same impairment. Groups are assigned from job duties, not job titles.
Worked examples
These are the examples the decoder is checked against, including the Division of Workers’ Compensation’s own published one.
| Input | Final PD | Weeks | Value at $290 |
|---|---|---|---|
15.03.01.00 – 8 – [1.4]11 – 340G – 13 – 15 (DWC’s own example) | 15% | 50.50 | $14,645.00 |
15.03.01.00 – 10 – [1.4]14 – 380H – 18 – 18 | 18% | 65.50 | $18,995.00 |
15.01.02.02 – 8 – [5]10 – 470H – 13 – 11 (2005 schedule, § 1) | 11% | 34.25 | $9,932.50 |
What the decoder does not do
It does not generate a rating from scratch. Producing a rating requires the proprietary tables in the Permanent DisabilityPD Permanent Disability. Compensation for lasting impairment. A different and much lower weekly rate — 2026 maximum $290/week. Rating Schedule, and a tool that guessed at them would be worse than no tool.
It reads your string, which already contains the outputs of those lookups — so it can tell you what you have, check that the six segments are consistent with each other, and tell you what the result is worth. Where it does not recognise an impairment code or an occupational group, it says so rather than inventing an answer.
Related
Sources
Labor Code § 4658§ 4659§ 4663
General information about California law, not legal advice about your case.
Impairment values described are from the AMA Guides, 5th Edition as applied under the California rating schedule; the Guides are a copyrighted medical text and figures here are summarized rather than reproduced. Your rating depends on your own examination findings.
Reviewed by Jamey Teitell, Partner & Trial Attorney · Last reviewed
Law Offices of Solov & Teitell, APC · (213) 380-9310
Printed from https://www.solovteitell.com/resources/rating-string-decoder/ · Last reviewed