On July 30th, 2025, the California Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) announced that its proposed Utilization Review (UR) regulations were rejected by the Office of Administrative Law (OAL), the agency responsible for ensuring that new state regulations are clear, necessary, and legally valid before they can be officially adopted.
The DWC submitted its proposed utilization rules to the OAL on June 6th, 2025, after gathering extensive public feedback from the rulemaking process. However, on July 22nd, the OAL returned the submission, identifying seven areas that require further clarification or additional public notice.
The DWC’s notice did not specify which portions of the regulations were cited by the OAL for clarification.
The DWC now has 120 days to revise the regulations and initiate another round of public comment. A revised draft is expected to be released soon, with the goal of finalizing the rules in time for an effective date of January 1, 2026.
Healthesystems has been tracking updates to the proposed changes since their introduction in June 2024, as they will eventually impact how utilization reviews are processed.
