California State Department of Workers Compensation requires all filings must use compliant DWC OCR forms. This well established requirement has fostered many questions. In an effort to provide assistance to ARS customers, below you will find the most common questions and answers derived from CMPro II customers;


OCR forms:
Q: What is an OCR form and why does the DWC use them?

A: OCR means "Optical Character Recognition", which means, "conversion of images of text into characters". To further assist in a meaningful  answer, imagine a picture of a German Shepard dog, you scan this picture and the computer sees not a German Shepard dog, it just sees a dog. OCR enabled characters work identical to the dog concept, if the character is recognizeable, it is converted. The reason the DWC uses OCR enabled forms is because the Government now requires a more efficient and speedy method of processing claims into the Court system. Ultimately, cases will be settled quicker because of the reduction in case errors.

Q : Can we develop our own versions of DWC's forms that work in CMPro II to auto populate DWC forms?

A : No. Eventhough DWC designed its forms to be "autopopulate ready", it does not mean that the DWC OCR forms can be directly plugged into CMPro II. ARS must adjust the version of the forms on the DWC Web site to operate correctly with CMPro II and the adjusted form must also be in compliance with court administrator rule 10228.

Q : Why are EAMS Forms so complicated - meaning, why can't I just use my word processor to create an EAMS Form?

A : EAMS forms are specially formatted Adobe PDF files that has very rigid and strict guidelines (court administrator rule 10228) governing the placement of information on the form. In addition to placement, other guidelines govern the type of font, and the use of certain special characters, i.e., "!@#$%^&()". Remember that EAMS Forms are OCR'ed by DWC which means EAMS Forms are by thier very nature, technically complex, and unless you or your staff are knowledgeable users of PDF authoring tools, then it is best to rely on trusted vendors such as ARS, to provide you with EAMS Forms?

Q : Why can't I type more data into the input fields, there is simply not enough room to input what is needed?

A : This question is asked by more CMPro II customers than any other question we receive. Every field of every EAMS Form has a built in field limiter that restricts the user from inputting more data than is necessary. During the early stages of EAMS creation, DWC was plagued with inappropriately filled in forms, as part of the solution, it was decided to place limitations upon the quantity of characters being input. These limitations have directly affected the quality of all Court filings which in turn has reduced the amount of rejected filings by the Court.