Not at all. Workers' Compensation laws do not allow an employee to sue an employer for being injured at work. Filing for Workers' Compensation benefits is much like filing a claim after a house fire or flood damage. However, if you were injured at work due to negligence of another party other than your employer, such as being rear-ended while working as a taxi driver or falling at a supermarket due to slippery floor while working as a Pepsi delivery man, you may be entitled to personal injury compensation. In these cases, you would need a personal injury attorney as well as a Workers' Compensation attorney to represent you.

First, you need to notify your injury to your employer as soon as possible, preferably immediately. Workers' Compensation laws require that you notify your employer about on-the-work injury in writing within 30 days of the incident. However, sometimes employees do not realize they were seriously injured until a few days to few weeks after the accident. If you later realize you were injured at work sometime after the accident, you should still notify your employer about your injury as soon as possible.

Your employer will want to know when, where, and how you were injured, so have this information on hand. Make sure you notify of all of your injured body parts to your employer. A Workers' Compensation case gets established based on specific injured body parts. An insurance company establishes your case and assign benefits based on the specific body parts that were injured. If you forget to notify your employer or your employer fails to report all injured body parts, you will not qualify to get treatment or benefits for the unreported body parts.

Once you report your injuries to your employer, your employer is legally required to report your injuries to the Workers' Compensation insurance company within 10 days. The insurance company or your employer should be able to provide you with a Carrier Case Number. You should also be assigned a Workers' Compensation Case Number. These two numbers will be the identifying numbers for your Workers' Compensation case. You can provide the healthcare providers you see with these two numbers to receive medical treatment.

Sometimes an employer is adversarial toward an employee for seeking Workers' Compensation benefits and refuses to file the Workers' Compensation claim. Sometimes an insurance company disputes that there had been a work-related injury. Or sometimes an employer does not have Workers' Compensation insurance and cannot provide an employee with Workers' Compensation benefits. In any case, if you were injured at work and you are not being provided with Workers’ Compensation insurance information, you need to seek out a Workers' Compensation attorney to receive benefits that you are entitled to.

Workers’ Compensation Board is a part of New York State regulatory agency that oversees the insurance companies that provides Workers’ Compensation insurances to employers and the doctors who treat the injured employees. Often there are conflicting opinions between the doctor and the insurance company about how seriously the employee is injured and what kind of treatment and benefit that the patient is entitled to. Usually, the injured employee has a Workers’ Compensation attorney to representing him/her. When there is disagreement, the employee’s attorney can request a hearing to the Workers’ Compensation Board. At the hearing, a Worker’s Compensation judge will make a decision about the disagreement.

Workers' Compensation Board has established a treatment guide called the Medical Treatment Guidelines for the most commonly injured body parts. These Medical Treatment Guidelines are meant to get the injured employee back to work as soon as possible while reducing costs. One of the complaints that the doctors have with these guidelines is that it does not take into account the physical differences between people. A 20 years old athlete and a 60 years old sedentary worker will respond differently to treatment for the same injury, and yet the guidelines do not take this simple fact into account. Therefore, if you need more treatment than what the guidelines allow for your injury, your doctor must request additional treatment to the insurance company. It has been our experience that it is difficult to get authorization for any additional treatment that is beyond the guidelines. When the doctor’s request for additional treatment for the injured employee is denied by the insurance company, the injured employee’s attorney can request a hearing to help approve the additional treatment.

Unfortunately, sometimes the injury is so severe that the injured worker cannot return to work for many months, or even permanently. The injured worker may also have exhausted all treatment options. When it becomes apparent that the worker’s injuries are permanent, the worker’s attorney can request a Permanent Impairment Rating evaluation from the worker’s doctor. There are established guidelines from the Workers’ Compensation Board that the doctor can follow to give a Permanent Impairment Rating to an injured worker. The attorney tries to get the maximum benefit that the worker is entitled to by applying the Permanent Impairment Rating determined by the doctor and the worker’s previous salary.

Often, the insurance company requests another doctor to evaluate the worker and form an opinion. Usually, there are conflicting opinions between the worker’s doctor and the insurance company’s doctor on how much the worker is permanently impaired. Both doctors will need to defend their positions at a deposition. Depositions can be unpleasant experiences for doctors, as the attorney from the opposite side will try to make each doctor appear less credible. How well the doctors perform at these depositions will have a direct impact on the worker’s compensation. Therefore, it is very important that the injured worker to be treating with a doctor who is familiar with the Workers’ Compensation regulations and comfortable with depositions.

If you have been injured recently and have your Workers' Compensation Case Number and a Carrier Case Number, and you know which body parts have been established, you can come in for treatment as long as one of the body parts are neck or back. In certain cases, if you are waiting to get these numbers, we may be able to treat you before you receive them. However, if you were injured at work many months ago and received many months of treatment, your treatment benefit most likely would have been exhausted by now. We will start try to get authorization for more treatment if needed. You are welcome to call our office at (718) 746-4919 and talk to us about your current situation.