Wednesday, March 23, 2011

My doctor gave me two impairment ratings for the same body part. Which one applies?

It is not uncommon for an ATP to assign two separate PPD ratings pertaining to the same body part. For example, if you injured your shoulder, you physician may assign a 15% impairment rating to your shoulder and a corresponding 7% impairment rating to the "whole body." In situations like this, the rating which yields the highest number of weeks of payable benefits is the applicable impairment rating.  This is an extremely important thing to remember when discussing a potential settlement of your claim.

In this example, the 15% shoulder rating would be used to calculate the number of weeks that PPD benefits are payable, because it yields 33.75 weeks of benefits, compared to 21 weeks for the 7% "whole body" rating. As you can see, this would make a huge difference in the total amount of PPD benefits you receive! For more information on how PPD benefits are calculated, please look here.

It's important to note that this post only pertains to those situations where the impairment ratings relate to the same body part. In other words, the rules are different if you suffer an injured leg and an injured arm in the same work accident, and your doctor assigns separate ratings for each of those body parts.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Did You Know? (Surveillance Edition)

Did you know that the insurance company of your empoyer can hire a surveillance company to follow you around to try to obtain footage of you acting in a way that might undermine your workers' compensation claim? I'm not posting this to scare anybody, but it's an important thing to be aware of if you're involved in workers' compensation litigation. Seems pretty sneaky, but it's legal.

Now, it's one thing if the surveillance company catches you lifting heavy weights for an hour at the gym--but from my experience, surveillance footage is usually from a distance and only captures the target for very brief periods of time. Accordingly, it can be taken completely out of context and not be an accurate depiction of how you really feel at any given moment. This is precisely why you need to make sure that your interests are represented if the employer tries to use surveillance footage against you, whether it's at trial or during settlement negotiations. Having an experienced workers' compensation attorney on your side can make all the difference in these types of situations. If you have any questions about your claim, even if you're not in the Athens, Georgia area, give us a call and we'll do everything we can to help you.

Quick Definitions: "MMI"

This stands for maximum medical improvement. This status is typically assigned to you by your ATP towards the end of your treatment. Essentially, this means that your doctor feels that you are as good as you'll ever be with respect to your work injury, and that your recovery has reached its peak.