Feeling aggravated? I’ll tell you what’s really a pain: When someone tells you that you have a medical condition like arthritis that you didn’t know about until you are injured at work. Even more aggravating is when your employer denies allowing that condition on your workers’ compensation claim!
Here’s an example of what we’re talking about: A worker falls and hurts her knee while doing her job. She seeks treatment from a BWC-certified provider and learns that in addition to the injury to her knee,she has arthritis in that joint. This is news to her. She didn’t know about the arthritis. The doctor wants to treat her arthritis, as well as the knee injury, but the claim is only allowed for the knee injury.
So she has to seek a further allowance to have the arthritis included in the claim. But in order to do so, she must provide documentation by objective diagnostic findings, objective clinical findings, or objective test results. Lucky for this worker, her doctor found that she had evidence of decreased range of motion after the treatment of her knee injury. Her arthritis was allowed!
Having trouble getting your employer to cover additional conditions that you believe started with your work injury? You probably should get a representative to help you with your claim. Call Heller, Maas, Moro & Magill today @ 800-589-6611.