How To Get The Right Treatment After Your Worker’s Comp Claim
When you get injured on the job, you must report it to the employer immediately. If you need treatment for the injury, ask your employer for a doctor to treat you. The employer needs to complete a notice of injury form. It gets filed with the State of Florida, and the workers’ compensation insurance company.
If they refuse to provide you treatment—and it is an emergency—you may go to the emergency room. You will then file a claim for the employer carrier to pay the bill. Under the Florida system, the insurance carrier controls the doctors you see. Your health insurance coverage is not involved. If you ignore the workers’ compensation rules, any unauthorized treatment you receive, may be excluded by the judge at a hearing about your injuries.
You are also entitled to an independent medical examination by a doctor of your choosing. Perhaps you disagree with the treating doctor's conclusion about work restrictions, causal connection of the accident to the injury or permanent impairment after reaching maximum medical improvement.
This examination is at your expense, and you can choose who you want for this opinion. If your IME disagrees with the authorized treating doctor, the judge of compensation claims may choose an expert medical advisor to decide which opinion the judge must accept. Therefore it is important to know your rights under the system and how your injury will be evaluated.
The state of Florida has a no-fault system. This means that workers, like yourself, are entitled to workers’ compensation if they were injured at work. But a legal advisor is priceless when it comes to understanding the law and medical issues.
The Employer’s Insurance Company
The carrier has a group of doctors they authorize for treatment. These doctors are paid a fraction of what health insurance pays and therefore they need volume practice. Usually, you are treated by an occupational medicine physician who will treat you conservatively. Depending on your job and your injury, they will likely return you to light-duty work.
If the employer has light duty available, you should try it. If you have problems, do not go back to the doctor and report those issues to him. Larger employers may have a pool of light-duty jobs but most do not. If the employer does not have light duty, you should be entitled to payments from the carrier.
If conservative treatment does not work, then you might get physical therapy, injections, and pain medicines. The healing process takes time, and if your injury is serious enough, you may be referred to a specialist for surgery. This is very radical and a trauma in and of itself, but in my experience, only those in significant chronic pain decide on surgery. A good workers compensation lawyer is helpful when you face the workers’ compensation system.
Your First Steps
The types of injuries you may get at work could easily fall into two categories:
Chronic
Acute
Imagine the person who works in a warehouse. If we were to slip and fall and get injured, then this would be an acute injury—it happened suddenly. Another example of this would be tearing a rotator cuff after trying to lift a box that was too heavy.
An injury that occurs over some time would be a chronic one. For the warehouse worker, the repetitive nature of the work could lead to overuse injuries.
If you suffered an acute injury, tell your employer immediately. And if it is a chronic one, notify your employer as soon as you learn that whatever is bothering you is connected to work.
