Relating to certain presumptions applicable to claims for benefits or compensation for certain medical conditions brought by certain first responders.

Contracts

• TPA Agreements: Review Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with Third-Party Administrators immediately. Ensure they have updated their denial logic. If a TPA denies a claim today using the old "nonroutine" standard, your entity faces liability for administrative penalties and bad faith litigation.
• Interlocal Agreements: Review cost-sharing provisions in mutual aid agreements. If a borrowed officer suffers a cardiac event, the "presumptive" liability is now easier to trigger, potentially altering the risk profile of shared services.

Hiring/Training

• Training Documentation: Training officers must now document the physical exertion levels of all drills. Since "routine" training is no longer excluded, your only defense against a post-training cardiac claim is proving the specific training session was sedentary or non-strenuous.
• Fitness for Duty: While not mandated by this bill, entities should aggressively enforce annual physicals to identify pre-existing "known causes" (e.g., non-work-related hypertension), which remains one of the few viable rebuttals to the presumption.

Reporting & Record-Keeping

• Incident Reports: Update incident reporting templates for Police/Fire/EMS. Fields must be added to capture specific biometric data or exertion details (e.g., "distance run," "weight lifted," "stairs climbed"). Vague descriptions like "on patrol" are now liability traps.
• Shift Logs: Precise time-stamping is critical. The presumption applies if the event occurs within 8 hours of the shift end. Discrepancies in shift-end times can be the difference between a compensable and non-compensable claim.

Fees & Costs

• Actuarial Reserves: Self-insured pools must increase loss reserves for the current fiscal year. The frequency of compensable cardiac claims will rise.
• Insurance Premiums: Entities on commercial paper should anticipate premium increases at the next renewal to account for the broadened scope of compensability.