Home›Solutions›Workers' Compensation›Longshore & Defense Base Act
LONGSHORE & DEFENSE BASE ACT REVIEW

Hearing loss, average weekly wage, and the §8(f) pre-existing condition.

Longshore and Defense Base Act review reads a deployment file for the three things the Benefits Review Board actually rules on: hearing-loss impairment under the AMA Guides, average weekly wage, and §8(f) pre-existing disability. Defense Base Act filings nearly doubled last year, and foreign-provider records and decades of prior injury history come with them.

Click any row → the source page it cites
Claim file · Case #IME-4812 read
Adams, Timothy · longshore claim production
342 pp / 2 productions received logged
11 duplicate pages removed free
p.140 — wrong patient quarantined
Pages 342 Documents 27 Cited 100%

The statute names the rulebook. The Board publishes the grades.

We do not build for a case type until we can name the standard that defines a correct output and the person who grades the file against it. Longshore and Defense Base Act claims give us both in writing.

Hearing loss is the clearest case: the Longshore Act does not leave the method to argument, it names the AMA Guides in the statute itself. Everything downstream of that is a question about what the pages say.

The rulebook and the referee
The rulebook
  • 33 USC §901 et seq. — the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act
  • 42 USC §1651 — the Defense Base Act, which extends the Longshore scheme to overseas contract work
  • 20 CFR Parts 701–704 and Part 702 — the administering regulations, including claims procedure
  • 33 USC §908(c)(13)(E) — statutorily mandates the AMA Guides as the standard for hearing loss
The referee
  • The District Director, at the informal conference
  • A DOL OALJ administrative law judge, at the formal hearing
  • The Benefits Review Board, then the Court of Appeals
  • Every level produces a written decision on the evidentiary record, and BRB decisions are published and searchable
Roughly 11,700 contested files a year at about ten hours of adjuster and paralegal time each Flat 10¢/page here, duplicates free
What the file actually looks like

Four hundred pages on a quiet claim. Two thousand on a deployed one.

A longshore or Defense Base Act file typically runs 400 to 2,000 pages, with about 1,200 in the middle of the range, and it almost never arrives as one production. It arrives as several, months apart, from a shipyard clinic, a theater medical facility, a stateside orthopedist, and an audiologist, each with its own numbering.

What makes it hard is not the length. It is faxed scans that degraded years ago, handwritten treatment notes, foreign-provider records in another language, and the same discharge summary reproduced across three productions under three different exhibit numbers.

The volume is not theoretical. DOL reported 46,961 injuries and deaths in FY2024, up from 35,239, with Defense Base Act cases alone at 27,342, a 77% year-over-year surge, against $1.595B in compensation paid.

Production profile · Case #IME-4812 cited 100%
Productions342 pp / 2 productions · 11 deduplicatedlogged
Audiometric testingEvery audiogram, page-citedcited
Foreign-provider recordsTranslated alongside the source pagenon-English
Prior injury historySurfaced with dates, for §8(f)flagged
Wage and employmentExtracted where the record documents itcited
27 documents · cited 100% · no impairment ratings, no compensability calls
What we'd build with you

Four steps, starting with one real file.

01

Send one real file

A contested longshore or DBA claim you already have, in whatever shape it arrived. Multiple productions, degraded scans, and non-English records are the normal case, not an exception we need you to clean up first.

02

We return the read, page-cited

The chronology, the audiometric testing, the wage and employment records, and the prior injury history, each line linked to its source page. In the demo case, 342 pages across 2 productions, 11 duplicates removed and a wrong-patient page quarantined before the read started.

03

We scope the build

Your output template, your section order, your terminology. Longshore claims adjusters, DBA claims specialists, and Longshore counsel want different things out of the same production, so the build follows whoever is signing the file.

04

You run it

Your team runs the files and reviews every output. We never rate impairment, decide compensability, or file anything with the District Director. The read is an input to a decision a person makes.

Audit trail · Case #IME-4812 exportable
08:12Production received · 342 pp / 2 productionssystem
08:3111 pages deduplicated across productionssystem
08:44p.140 flagged — wrong patientsystem
08:54Chronology built · 27 documents · cited 100%system
09:20Read reviewed · citations verifiedreviewer
09:26Exported · LS-form work and petitions drafted off-platformreviewer
Every access logged · file deleted 30 days after delivery
Why Medrecords AI

The rules the platform never breaks.

Medrecords AI EVERY LINE CITED
CASE #IME-4812 · ADAMS, T.342 pp
2/14 — ER visit, right knee p.4
4/18 — arthroscopic surgery p.61
p.140 — wrong patient quarantined
Medrecords AI
Read every page · cite every line

HIPAA, under a signed BAA

Every file is handled under our Business Associate Agreement, from the first byte.

Never trains a model

Your records are never used to train any AI model — ours or anyone else's.

Every line cited

If we can't cite it, we don't say it. Every sentence links to its source page.

Deleted after delivery

Files are deleted 30 days after delivery, with a full audit log of every access.

Powered by the platform

Four capabilities behind every longshore read.

The longshore and Defense Base Act read is one deliverable of the same platform that reads, sorts, and cites the whole record.

Medical Chronology

Deployment, treatment, and prior injury history assemble into one dated timeline, synced to every source page across every production.

IN ACTION · 342 pp / 2 productions → one continuous timeline

Medical Record Translation

Defense Base Act files arrive with theater and foreign-provider records in other languages. They are read and carried into the chronology beside the source page.

IN ACTION · non-English page → cited entry, original retained

Record Alteration Detection

Where the same document appears in more than one production with differences, the discrepancy is surfaced and cited rather than resolved silently in the background.

IN ACTION · p.140 wrong patient → quarantined, not merged

Verifiable AI Citations

Every level of Longshore review decides on a written record, so every line we return links back to the page it was pulled from.

IN ACTION · 27 documents → cited 100%
FAQ

Longshore and Defense Base Act review, answered.

It reads the whole production the way the file will be read on appeal: the deployment and treatment history, the audiometric testing behind a hearing-loss claim, the wage and employment records, and the prior injury history a §8(f) petition turns on. Every line we return is cited to the page it came from. What the file proves, and what to argue from it, stays with your examiner and your counsel.

No. 33 USC §908(c)(13)(E) makes the AMA Guides the mandatory standard for hearing loss under the Longshore Act, and a physician applies it. We extract and cite the audiometric testing, the dates, the testing conditions the record documents, and any earlier audiograms buried in the production. The impairment rating itself is the examining physician's opinion, not ours.

We surface and cite what the production actually contains about a pre-existing condition: earlier injuries, prior claims referenced in the treatment notes, and the dates that place them before the covered injury. Whether that record supports Special Fund relief under 33 USC §908(f) is a legal judgment for counsel and the claims examiner. The platform does not make it.

Every dated clinical event in the production, in order, each entry linked to the page it came from. On a longshore or Defense Base Act file that usually means 400 to 2,000 pages across more than one production, foreign-provider records in other languages, degraded scans, and handwritten notes. Duplicate pages are removed and counted rather than silently dropped.

No to both. Medrecords AI does not retrieve records from providers or facilities; you bring the production you already have. We also make no call on evidentiary weight. The District Director, the administrative law judge, and the Benefits Review Board each decide what the record supports, on a written decision. We organize and cite the pages they will be reading.

Send one file. We'll tell you what we can read.

No obligation. If the case type is buildable we'll scope it; if it isn't, we'll say so.