Tell Legislators to Oppose HB-1300 to Protect Injured Workers and Colorado Small Businesses

Under current law, an injured employee is provided a list of four physicians to choose from when seeking care for a work-related injury. HB25-1300, currently advancing in the state legislature, encourages the injured employee to instead select from the state government’s directory, coupled with open-ended timelines for multiple physician changes. 

With over a century of experience serving injured employees, Pinnacol knows injured workers deserve trusted guidance and medical care in the event of an injury. When a new customer joins Pinnacol, we collaborate to thoughtfully provide a panel of physicians based on quality, experience, workers’ compensation specialty, and location to meet the unique needs of their workplace and the care of their employees. This process ensures that employees are quickly provided with meaningful resources and guidance in the event of an injury, eliminating delays in treatment and supporting them through their recovery. It also ensures that physicians have a proven track record in understanding the unique nature of return to work and other programs that support an injured employee’s journey back to recovery and the workplace.    

In collaboration with our customers, we make significant investments to make the process simple, workable, efficient, and beneficial to their employees. Pinnacol maintains the highest injured worker satisfaction in Colorado among major carriers by a wide margin, and less than half of one percent of injured employees under Pinnacol’s care request a physician change. 

The state government’s investment in its directory of physicians could in no way compare to the thoughtful and successful care that Pinnacol and its policyholders like you have made in the network of physicians that serves injured employees today. We are concerned that this legislation will have injured employees navigate a vast government directory of physicians with complex designations, credentials, manual distance calculations and additional required state forms while also creating open-ended timelines for multiple physician changes. This, coupled with the challenging circumstances of their injury, will ultimately delay care, harm injured employees and increase costs to employers.