PROGRAMS
Education & Events
Courses, Presentations & Events
CEUs, Pre-Conference Sessions, Conference Presentations, and Leadership Programs
The Health & Safety Leadership Alliance offers evidence-based education for public safety professionals, risk managers, clinicians, and system leaders. Programs vary in format and cost. Some sessions are complimentary for qualifying agencies; conference-based courses may have separate registration requirements.
UPCOMING EVENTS
FSPA PRE-CONFERENCE COURSE | Hilton Portland Downtown | October 14, 2026
Pre-Conference Course · October 14, 2026
Workers’ Comp They Didn’t Teach You
A Practical Playbook for Public Safety Clinicians and Leadership
- Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2026
- Time: 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
- Location: Hilton Portland Downtown, Portland, OR
- CEUs: 3 Hours (pending approval)
- Faculty: 3 Expert Speakers
- Conference: 9th Annual Fire Service Psychology Conference
Clinicians treating injured workers in fire, law enforcement, EMS, and corrections navigate a workers’ compensation system built around rules they were never taught. Public safety personnel carry injuries and conditions that span physical health, behavioral health, operational performance, and organizational systems simultaneously. Each of those domains intersects with the workers’ compensation process in ways that shape whether a patient gets the care the evidence supports. In three hours, this course builds a working, practical understanding of the system from the clinician’s perspective, covering documentation under Utilization Review (UR) scrutiny, Request for Authorization (RFA) workflows, Qualified Medical Evaluator / Independent Medical Examination (QME/IME) fundamentals, and peer-to-peer review strategies.
Public safety professionals, including firefighters, health and safety officers, wellness coordinators, and agency administrators who manage injured workers, will also gain an essential operational foundation. Attendees will learn how the workers’ compensation system processes a claim, what evidence-based care standards govern clinical decisions, and how to identify and vet providers with genuine competence in public safety populations. Knowing what cultural competence looks like, and how to vet the facilities and clinicians responsible for your people, is a direct operational skill.
Conference registration required separately. This pre-conference course complements, and does not duplicate, the psychology and mental health-focused sessions in the 9th Annual Fire Service Psychology Conference on October 15 to 16. Visit firepsychology.org.
Clinicians who treat injured firefighters and public safety personnel operate inside a workers’ compensation system most were never taught. The documentation requirements, authorization workflows, utilization review process, and QME/IME structures are not covered in standard clinical training, a gap that costs patients precious recovery time. Concurrently, agency leaders and safety officers are often left navigating these same hurdles without clear visibility into how care decisions are evaluated and authorized. This session addresses the critical systems layer that sits upstream of clinical delivery across all four health domains: physical, behavioral, occupational, and organizational.
This course is designed for any licensed provider navigating documentation, authorization, or QME/IME processes on behalf of injured public safety personnel, as well as the agency leadership teams responsible for supporting them. It covers the workers’ comp lifecycle from initial injury through return to work, identifying where claims most commonly encounter friction and providing actionable playbooks to clear those hurdles.
Course Structure
Total Duration: 3 hours (1400 to 1700) | Three 45-minute content blocks with two 10-minute breaks. Each block builds on the prior one. Full attendance recommended for CEU credit.
- Block 1: Workers’ Compensation Fundamentals for Clinicians & Agencies : The system, stakeholders, the clinician’s role as Primary Treating Physician (PTP), fire presumption laws, PTSD IOP pathways, and identifying common claim lifecycle friction points.
- Block 2: Documentation, RFA, and the Authorization Process : Constructing documentation for UR scrutiny, medical necessity, clinical rationale, denial avoidance, the role of medical assistants, and navigating IMR/appeal pathways.
- Block 3: QME/IME Fundamentals, Peer-to-Peer Reviews, and Clinical Advocacy : The QME/IME role vs. PTP, navigating evaluation findings nationally and regionally, structuring effective peer-to-peer calls, communicating with claims adjusters, and collaborative employer return-to-work obligations.
Upon completion, participants will be able to:
- Describe the workers’ compensation process from initial injury through return to work, and identify where clinicians and agencies most commonly hit systemic friction points.
- Construct and evaluate clinical documentation that accurately reflects the patient’s functional status, work restrictions, and treatment rationale in language that supports authorization and reduces denial risk.
- Explain the Request for Authorization (RFA) process, including how to submit accurately, what triggers Utilization Review (UR), and how to navigate a UR response without shortchanging patient needs.
- Describe the role and responsibilities of a Qualified Medical Evaluator / Independent Medical Examiner (QME/IME), utilizing the California system as an instructive framework alongside national models, including when an evaluation is ordered and what the report functions to resolve.
- Prepare for and conduct peer-to-peer review conversations that are factual, clinically grounded, and effective in supporting medically necessary care.
- Apply these frameworks specifically to fire service and public safety patients, recognizing the unique occupational, psychological, and systemic factors (such as presumption laws) that shape claims.
- Identify the hallmarks of cultural and operational competence in workers’ compensation providers to effectively vet external facilities and clinicians responsible for department personnel.
David Picone
CEO, Health & Safety Leadership Alliance
Battalion Chief / Paramedic, SDFD (Ret.)
Workers’ compensation system navigation, public safety operational context, program integration
Dr. Ramsey Ali, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist, First Responder Institute
Clinical care perspective, trauma and psychological injury in fire service workers’ comp, treatment documentation
Dr. Yolanta Petrofsky
Occupational Medicine and Public Safety Health Advisor
QME processes, peer-to-peer review, clinical documentation standards
Support This Session. Reach the Room.
Fire service psychologists, clinicians, and wellness leaders focused on PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain will be in this room October 14. Your organization belongs with them.
Conference Presentation · October 15, 2026
Restoring Resilience
An Evidence-Based Biopsychosocial Approach to PTSD, Brain Injury, and Chronic Pain in First Responders
- Date: Thursday, October 15, 2026
- Time: 1:30 PM to 2:50 PM
- Location: Hilton Portland Downtown, Portland, OR
- Conference: 9th Annual Fire Service Psychology Conference, October 15 to 16
This session applies an integrated biopsychosocial framework to the intersection of PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain in fire service patients. Drawing on current evidence in psychoneuroimmunology, nutritional psychiatry, and occupational recovery, the presentation equips fire service psychologists and clinicians with a broader lens for understanding and treating co-occurring conditions in this population.
This session is part of the main Fire Service Psychology Conference program. Conference registration is required.
Also at this conference: Workers’ Comp They Didn’t Teach You, pre-conference course on October 14.
Public safety personnel presenting with PTSD, chronic pain, and brain injury rarely arrive with a single clean diagnosis. More often, the conditions overlap, reinforce each other, and are shaped by occupational exposure patterns that fall outside standard clinical frameworks.
This presentation applies an evidence-based biopsychosocial model to that intersection. Topics include: psychoneuroimmunological mechanisms linking trauma to chronic inflammation and pain; nutritional and metabolic factors affecting recovery trajectories; PTSD assessment and treatment sequencing in the presence of TBI; and practical treatment frameworks for clinicians operating in the workers’ compensation environment.
David Picone
CEO, Health & Safety Leadership Alliance
Battalion Chief / Paramedic, SDFD (Ret.)
Program integration and operational context for biopsychosocial recovery in public safety
Dr. Ramsey Ali, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist, First Responder Institute
Clinical psychology perspective on PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain in first responders
WILG ANNUAL CONVENTION | NAPA VALLEY, CA | OCTOBER 17-21, 2026
60-Minute CLE Session, WILG Annual Convention
First Responder Claims
A Look Behind the Risk Management Curtain and the San Diego Model
- Dates: October 17-21, 2026 (WILG Annual Convention)
- Session Date and Time: Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 9:15 AM PDT
- Format: 60-minute CLE session
- Location: The Meritage Resort and Spa, Napa Valley, CA
- Presenters: David Picone and Matt Hill, Esq.
- Conference: WILG Annual Convention 2026
Public safety claims do not behave like other workers’ compensation claims. Presumption law changes who can file. Exposure builds across a career instead of arriving with one date and one run number. And the employer, the risk function, and the workforce all sit inside the same organization. David Picone has seen that from both sides, from the inside. He served as a paramedic treating injured workers and as a battalion chief operating within the system that managed their claims at San Diego Fire-Rescue. This session is what he learned there: how authorization decisions actually get made, who makes them, and what happens to an injured worker when the clinical track and the administrative track come apart. Applicant attorney Matt Hill opens the hour with the landscape these cases live in and stays in the conversation throughout.
Ten years of data from inside a public agency, and what a better designed claims system actually looked like in practice.
David Picone walks through what one public agency built to close the gap between clinical care and claims administration. A single point of contact with the claims administrator. A vetted medical partner shared by both sides. Causation determined by that partner instead of a QME. Fast-track utilization review. An immediate treatment fund available at the point of injury.
Then the results. Across ten years the injury rate per full-time employee fell from 32 percent to 24 percent while the department added more than 183 positions, and annual claim volume held steady even as presumptive coverage expanded who could file.
What you leave with:
- Why public safety claims differ structurally, from presumption to cumulative exposure to the agency’s dual role as employer and risk holder
- The system-level friction points, authorization delay, disconnected care pathways, and communication gaps, that turn manageable injuries into prolonged claims
- The specific mechanisms one agency used to remove those friction points, and how each one changed the decision path on a claim
- Ten years of outcome data usable as a structural comparison point when arguing for a better system elsewhere
The session is diagnostic, not adversarial. It is not built to favor applicant or defense. It shows what the system does, where it predictably fails workers, and what a better designed version looked like in practice.
Sixty minutes, two presenters, and questions taken throughout rather than saved for the end.
Audience: applicant attorneys.
David Picone
CEO, Health & Safety Leadership Alliance / Battalion Chief, Paramedic, SDFD (Ret.)
Workers’ compensation system navigation, public safety operational context, program integration
Matt Hill, Esq.
Applicant Attorney, Law Office of Matthew D. Hill, P.C.
Applicant legal perspective, employee representation, and access to care
2026 CFCA ANNUAL CONFERENCE | Sheraton Universal Hotel, Universal City, CA | October 27, 2026
Conference Presentation · October 27, 2026
Behavioral Health Is a Workforce Strategy, Not a Benefit
- Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2026
- Time: 3:10 PM to 4:00 PM
- Location: Sheraton Universal Hotel, Universal City, CA
- Format: Conference session
- Presenter: David Picone
- Conference: 2026 CFCA Annual Conference
Most fire departments treat behavioral health as a benefit offered after a critical incident, something added on top of daily operations rather than built into how the department runs. This session makes the case that it belongs on the same list as staffing, training, and equipment: a performance variable with direct effects on injury rates, disability claims, workers’ compensation costs, and retention.
Drawing on ten years of outcomes from the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, where injury rates per FTE dropped from 32 percent to 24 percent even as the department grew by 184 positions and presumptive PTSD claims surged statewide, this session lays out a practical model for embedding behavioral health into workforce planning rather than treating it as a reactive add-on.
Chiefs and command staff will leave with a framework for integrating clinical, operational, and risk management functions, and language for bringing elected officials and risk managers into the conversation as partners in workforce readiness, not adversaries in a budget fight.
David Picone
CEO, Health & Safety Leadership Alliance / Battalion Chief (Ret.), San Diego Fire-Rescue Department
Built and led one of the most comprehensive Health & Safety Office models in public safety, authoring 34 integrated policies spanning physical wellness, behavioral health, cancer prevention, injury rehabilitation, and workers’ compensation.
PAST EVENTS
ELEVATE WORKERS’ COMPENSATION CONFERENCE | Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, CA | September 21, 2026
Pre-Conference Session · September 21, 2026
Beyond Cost Containment
Practical Strategies for Better Workers’ Compensation Outcomes
- Date: Monday, September 21, 2026
- Time: 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
- Location: Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, CA
- Cost: Free to Attend
- CEUs: See Continuing Education Credits below
- Faculty: 7 Expert Speakers
Beyond Cost Containment is a first-of-its-kind, 3-hour integrated pre-conference session bringing together seven multidisciplinary experts to address the real drivers of cost and outcome failure in public safety workers’ compensation. This session examines the intersection of physical health, behavioral health, risk management, and system coordination, and what it takes to change predictable outcomes.
Open to public safety agency staff and their guests, including Risk Managers, Workers’ Compensation professionals, and related fields. Guests are welcome to register individually.
This session is part of the Elevate workers’ compensation conference. Conference admission is required separately. Visit elevateworkcomp.com.
Attendance is limited. Questions: info@HSLAlliance.org
Workers’ compensation outcomes are shaped well before a claim becomes complex. Early decision-making, access to appropriate care, legal pathways, communication, prevention practices, and coordination between stakeholders determine whether a case resolves efficiently or progresses into prolonged disability, increased cost, and extended workforce impact.
Beyond Cost Containment is a nationally applicable continuing education course designed for risk managers, human resources leaders, workers’ compensation professionals, attorneys, clinicians, psychologists, Qualified Medical Evaluators (QMEs), and public safety health, safety, and wellness leaders. The course brings these perspectives together to examine how system alignment improves both recovery outcomes and organizational performance.
Using two core frameworks (System-Level Friction Points in High-Risk Cases and the Integrated Workforce Health Ecosystem), participants examine how delays in authorization, disconnected care pathways, communication gaps, and procedural inefficiencies contribute to complex claims involving chronic pain, brain injury, behavioral health conditions, and substance dependence.
Course Structure
Total Duration: 2 hours 50 minutes | Three Instructional Blocks of 50 minutes each, with two 10-minute breaks. Full attendance required for CEU credit.
Upon completion, participants will be able to:
- Identify system-level friction points that contribute to delayed recovery, prolonged claim duration, and increased cost.
- Explain how legal processes, including Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and claims procedures, influence care access and claim progression.
- Describe how prevention, operational readiness, early intervention, and return-to-work practices impact claim severity and overall risk exposure.
- Apply an integrated workforce health ecosystem framework to align risk management, clinical care, claims processes, HR, and public safety operations.
- Evaluate how coordination between risk, legal, clinical, HR, and operational stakeholders affects recovery and return-to-work outcomes.
- Develop practical, role-specific strategies to improve collaboration while maintaining compliance, defensibility, and accountability.
CEU credits are available for the following professional licenses:
- MCLE: Minimum Continuing Legal Education (attorneys, judges, and legal professionals)
- CA Claims: California Department of Insurance (insurance adjusters, workers’ compensation professionals, risk managers)
- CCM: Certified Case Manager
- BRN: California Board of Registered Nurses (RNs and nurse case managers)
The following credits are pending approval and may not be available at the time of the event:
- APA: American Psychological Association (psychologists, therapists, and behavioral health professionals)
- QME: California Qualified Medical Evaluator
EMT and paramedic credit (CAPCE) is not currently available for this program.
David Picone
CEO, Health & Safety Leadership Alliance
Battalion Chief / Paramedic, SDFD (Ret.)
Public safety health and safety leadership; operational prevention and system integration
Lorenzo Glenn
Captain, Anaheim Police Department
Law enforcement wellness, peer support, and operational readiness
Joseph Sousa
Workers’ Compensation & Insurance Manager, City of San Diego
Workers’ compensation management, claims administration, and risk oversight
Diana Adams
Senior Chief Deputy City Attorney (Ret.), City of San Diego
Defense/public legal perspective, compliance, governance, and employer representation
Matthew D. Hill, Esq.
Law Office of Matthew D. Hill, P.C.
Applicant legal perspective, employee representation, and access to care
Dr. Ramsey Ali, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist, First Responder Institute
Clinical care, trauma recovery, and functional outcomes
Dr. David Rios, MD, MPH
Director of Medical Operations, San Diego and Fresno, Concentra
Occupational medicine, workplace injury outcomes, and medical direction for SDFD’s physical wellness program
Support This Session. Reach the Room.
Risk managers, attorneys, clinicians, and public safety leaders rarely share the same room. On September 21, they will.