Were you injured at work and need to use workers' compensation? If so, you'll definitely want to follow these tips that will help avoid denied or delayed benefits for your claim.
Don't Wait To Report The Injury
One of the first things that you'll have to do is report your workplace-related injury to your employer. Unfortunately, each state has its own laws regarding how quickly you have to do this. Some states could be 30 days while another could be 6 months. Make sure that you know what deadline you are working against due to your local laws, and get your injury report in before that deadline.
Why would someone not report the injury quickly? This is often due to not thinking the injury is serious, being reprimanded at work, or even being fired for reporting the injury. A long delay between the accident and reporting can also lead to suspicion regarding how the injury actually happened.
Tell Your Doctor The Truth
It's important that you tell any doctor the truth about what happened regarding your injury. The reports from your doctors are going to be what helps prove your injury is real and serious, and withholding any information about it can cause you to receive less compensation than what you deserve. Knowing the nature of the injury and how it happened can help the doctor form a proper diagnosis, and help document the severity of the injury based on how it happened.
Visit An Approved Doctor
While you may love your primary care physician or a particular specialist, know that you have to visit the doctors provided by the workers' compensation provider to be covered. You are not using your own health insurance for this claim, since you're actually using the workers' compensation insurance. Consider their list of doctors as their own network that you have to use to get coverage. These doctors are not going to work on your employer's behalf, they are just the approved doctors that you can visit.
Cooperate By Providing Medical Records
Know that you are going to have to provide medical records as part of your worker's compensation claim that go beyond those records related to the injury. It is going to be necessary to release all medical records so that it is known if you had an existing injury that was aggravated or if this injury is brand new. All it does is help prove your case and remove doubt.
For more information, contact a workers' compensation attorney.
