If you’ve been injured at work in Oklahoma you’re entitled to medical treatment through workers compensation. The medical treatment must be provided by the employer within five days of the employers notice of the injury. The important thing is that the notice must be actual notice of the injury. Actual notice seems a simple thing but trust me lots of trial time is spent working this issue out. To be safe, unless you’ve been taken by ambulance to
the emergency room, make sure you report the injury at the time your injured and that a workers compensation case is filed from the start.
Picking Your Doctor For a Work Injury:
The employers workers compensation insurance company is entitled to pick the treating physician. This is done through the insurance adjuster that’s assigned to your case. Clients get confused as to who is exactly picking their doctor. The first thing is that its not your employer but rather its the insurance company that picks the original treating physician. The doctor is part of a pool of pre-approved medical providers who are part of Comp-source Oklahoma. For you to be treated by a doctor and for this to be paid by workers compensation insurance the medical provider must be a workers compensation insurance doctor. An exception to this rule is that if the employer fails to provide medical treatment and its past the notice period you can get your own medical provider and the employer is responsible.
The medical treatment is to continue until you reach maximum medical improvement. This means that for an admitted work injury accident the doctor will treat you until that point when additional treatment wont improve your condition. Once released at maximum medical improvement any temporary disability payments that you’re receiving will be stopped. At this point you are released back to work. This release may or may not be with permanent restrictions. Whether or not you have restrictions is largely a function of the injury you suffered.
Released by The Work Injury Doctor:
Upon release at maximum improvement you’ll be allowed to pick another doctor for a second opinion. This is called a form A doctor. The form A doctor is used in several different circumstances. Those range from disagreements with the diagnosis made by your original treating physician or a simple second opinion. Depending on the type of injury I ask my clients to take the opportunity for a form A doctor serious.
An example is on the job back injury cases. If you’ve suffered a back injury at work and have had a surgery use the Form A. Given the severity of the injury and its life long impact on you I suggest a second look by the Form A Doctor. Another advantage to a form a doctor is that your Oklahoma workers comp attorney gets to take part in picking out this Doctor. Again, the Doctor is an Oklahoma workers compensation doctor. The difference is that of work injury doctors we prefer some over others. The reasons are professional in that we prefer doctors who seem more interested in treating patience than those who in our opinion seem more insurance company biased.