How Do I Find My MPN Doctor List in California?

How Do I Find My MPN Doctor List in California?

Start with the written notice your employer or insurer owes you. It names your Medical Provider Network (MPN), a phone number for help finding a doctor, and a link to the network's own online provider list.

If you were handed a short letter after reporting your injury, or an adjuster mentioned "the network" without much else, you are not missing some well-known tool. California does not run a public search where you type an insurance company's name and see every approved doctor. The roster lives on the MPN's own website, not on a state database.

You might know your network only as "the Sedgwick list" or "the State Fund network," since that is the name printed on your claim paperwork. This site's MPN guide covers your rights inside the network: picking a doctor, switching, and asking for a second opinion. This guide covers the narrower task of actually locating the current roster and reaching someone whose job is to help you use it.

Three things get you there: the notice itself, the MPN's own website, and a phone line called the Medical Access Assistant that California law requires every network to staff. The sections below walk through each one, plus what to do if the list still does not work for you.

What Does the Required MPN Notice Have to Tell You?

Your employer or insurer must send you a personal written notice naming your MPN, its identification number, a contact person, and a Medical Access Assistant's phone number, once your injury is covered by the network.

Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations, section 9767.12, requires this notice as soon as your injury is reported or your care moves into an MPN. This site's guide to that notice covers every item it must include. For finding your doctor list, four pieces matter most:

• The MPN's name and its unique identification number.
• The MPN Contact, the person who answers complaints and general questions about the network.
• A toll-free number for the MPN Medical Access Assistant, with a description of how that person helps you find and book a doctor.
• The MPN's website address, including the specific address that holds the roster of every treating physician in the network.

Your workplace should also carry a general posting that names the network and its contact number, under 8 CCR 9881. If you never received the personal notice, or you cannot find it now, write to your claims administrator and ask for the MPN name, its identification number, and the number for its Medical Access Assistant. Keep a copy of that request and the date you sent it.

How Do You Reach the Actual List of Doctors?

Once you know your MPN's name, go to the web address from your notice. California law requires every network to post a roster of its doctors online and update it at least every three months.

Under Labor Code section 4616, every MPN has had to post a roster of all participating physicians on its own website since July 1, 2021, updated at least quarterly, and the listing must show each doctor's name, office address, and office phone number. The Division of Workers' Compensation (DWC) does not host that roster itself.

The administrative director shall post, on the division's internet website, the internet website address of every approved medical provider network.

That roster lives on the insurer's or claims administrator's own site, not a DWC page, often under a name like provider directory or network search. Several of the companies that administer California workers' comp claims run their own MPNs this way, including Sedgwick, CorVel, State Fund, and Gallagher Bassett. Yazdchi Law P.C. is not affiliated with any claims administrator. If one of them is named on your notice, this site's Sedgwick guide, CorVel guide, State Fund guide, or Gallagher Bassett guide covers how to reach that company about your claim generally. Use the web address on your notice rather than a general search, since the roster is specific to your employer's plan, not the company as a whole.

If a doctor on the list has moved or stopped taking injured workers, the regulation gives the network 45 days from being told to take that listing down, through the phone number or email every provider directory must post for reporting errors. A wrong listing is worth reporting, not just working around.

What If You Cannot Find the List, or Nobody Answers?

Call the Medical Access Assistant number from your notice. Finding you an available doctor and booking the appointment is that person's actual job under California law, not a favor.

Every MPN must staff one or more Medical Access Assistants, based in the United States, with a toll-free number. Title 8, section 9767.5(h), requires them to be reachable at least Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific time, in English and Spanish, with someone able to take a message and respond by the next business day. Their job differs from your claims adjuster's: they exist specifically to help you find a doctor you have not seen yet and to schedule and confirm that appointment.

If you do not have the notice and cannot reach anyone at your employer, ask the claims administrator named on any letter you did receive for the MPN Contact and Medical Access Assistant numbers. This site's guide on choosing your doctor covers what happens once you reach someone and book that first visit.

How Can You Tell the Network Is Actually DWC-Approved?

Check the MPN's name and identification number against the state's own list of approved networks, published on the California Open Data Portal.

DWC does not run a doctor-by-doctor search, but it does publish which networks it has approved. DWC's own medical provider network page links a searchable list of approved networks by name of applicant and one sorted by approval date, both hosted on the state's Open Data Portal. Matching the name and identification number from your notice against that list is a reasonable way to confirm you are dealing with a real, currently approved MPN, not an outdated or mislabeled one.

What If No Listed Doctor Takes New Patients or Treats Your Injury?

The network has to meet real access and timing rules. When it cannot, the law lets you get care from an appropriate specialist outside the MPN.

An MPN must have doctors within 60 minutes or 30 miles of your home or workplace who can treat common work injuries. The table below shows the scheduling clocks a Medical Access Assistant has to meet, and what happens the moment the network misses one.

Keep a simple record: the date you called your Medical Access Assistant, who you spoke with, and what they offered you. This site's guide on the MPN versus predesignating your own doctor covers the separate question of whether you ever had the right to skip the network entirely. This site's MPN rights guide covers switching doctors and asking for a second opinion once you are already seeing someone on the list.

When Does a Lawyer Help With an MPN Problem?

A lawyer tends to help once the network cannot produce a working list, its Medical Access Assistant will not schedule you within the legal timeframes, or your claims administrator will not confirm who the MPN even is.

Plenty of injured workers find and use their MPN's list without any dispute. A workers' compensation attorney becomes useful once that process breaks down: a notice that never arrives, a roster with no one who treats your injury, or an assistant who will not put anything in writing. If you hire a workers' compensation attorney, the fee request is usually 15% to 18% of what your claim recovers, a workers' compensation judge has to approve it, and Labor Code section 4906 sets that rule. This site's fee guide covers that process in full.

Call (661) 273-1780 or use the contact form for a free consultation. Yazdchi Law P.C. represents injured workers across California from its one office in Palmdale and reviews each matter individually before deciding whether it can help.

Related reading

Keep reading for your rights once you are inside the network, and how predesignating your own doctor compares.

• What is an MPN, and what rights do you have inside one?
• Should you use the MPN or predesignate your own doctor?
• Can you choose your own doctor for workers' comp?
• What exactly must your MPN notice say?