Open Medicals In On The Job Injury Cases

Understanding Open Medicals in Workers’ Compensation Cases

Why Lifetime Medical Coverage Isn’t Always What It Seems

Many people think this is very important. It can be. The reality is that doctors who do worker’s compensation get paid more and are encouraged to be conservative in their impairment ratings and physical restrictions. Those doctors will have a worker’s compensation nurse auditing the appointments and treatment. The fact is that worker’s compensation doctors used to be so bad that several were banned from testifying in various courtrooms throughout the state. About 20 years ago insurance companies began to hire better doctors who got better results. We used to see doctors who were obviously lying and who could only claim that the injured worker was faking or malingering. It still happens, but rarely.

What does happen is when the right to future medical treatment is left open, the insurance companies make it difficult to schedule an appointment to access that treatment. If there is a new injury such as a car accident or a fall, the right to medical treatment has ended. When the doctor makes a finding that there have been arthritic changes in and around the area of injury, the insurance company disputes the injury and the treatment. The problem that people have at that point in time is that they don’t know how to obtain the necessary testimony from the doctor to obtain the treatment they need and may not have the $2,500.00 that the doctor charges for that testimony.

Sometimes if people have a good employer with good insurance and they get continuing treatment for pain, having open medicals can be invaluable. On the other hand, people often leave the courtroom with a right that they can’t enforce and has no value. It sounds good, but any new event will likely leave the doctor unable to specify to the court whether it was the original injury or the new event. In those cases, the court might be unable to make a decision in the injured worker’s favor. Remember that good personal injury lawyers don’t charge to discuss a case. That’s a service you should use.

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