Division 4.7. Retraining And Rehabilitation of California Labor Code >> Division 4.7.

Every public agency, its insurance carrier, and the State Department of Rehabilitation shall jointly formulate procedures for the selection and orderly referral of injured full-time public employees who may be benefited by rehabilitation services and retrained for other positions in public service. The State Department of Rehabilitation shall cooperate in both designing and monitoring results of rehabilitation programs for the disabled employees. The primary purpose of this division is to encourage public agencies to reemploy their injured employees in suitable and gainful employment.

The employer or insurance carrier shall notify the injured employee of the availability of rehabilitation services in those cases where there is continuing disability of 28 days and beyond. Notification shall be made at the time the employee is paid retroactively for the first day of disability (in cases of 28 days of continuing disability or hospitalization) which has previously been uncompensated. A copy of said notification shall be forwarded to the State Department of Rehabilitation.

The initiation of a rehabilitation plan shall be the joint responsibility of the injured employee, and the employer or the insurance carrier.

If a rehabilitation plan requires an injured employee to attend an educational or medical facility away from his home, the injured employee shall be paid a reasonable and necessary subsistence allowance in addition to temporary disability indemnity. The subsistence allowance shall be regarded neither as indemnity nor as replacement for lost earnings, but rather as an amount reasonable and necessary to sustain the employee. The determination of need in a particular case shall be established as part of the rehabilitation plan.

An injured employee agreeing to a rehabilitation plan shall cooperate in carrying it out. On his unreasonable refusal to comply with the provisions of the rehabilitation plan, the injured employee' s rights to further subsistence shall be suspended until compliance is obtained, except that the payment of temporary or permanent disability indemnity, which would be payable regardless of the rehabilitation plan, shall not be suspended.

The injured employee may agree with his employer or insurance carrier upon a rehabilitation plan without submission of such plan for approval to the State Department of Rehabilitation. Provision of service under such plans shall be at no cost to the State General Fund.

The injured employee shall receive such medical and vocational rehabilitative services as may be reasonably necessary to restore him to suitable employment.

The injured employee's rehabilitation benefit is an additional benefit and shall not be converted to or replace any workmen's compensation benefit available to him.

The initiation and acceptance of a rehabilitation program shall be voluntary and not compulsory upon the employer, the insurance carrier, or the injured employee.