Impairment Rating

Mar 14, 2024 | Claims Process, WC & Other Laws

Impairment Rating – When someone’s injured at work their injuries result, more often than not, in either a physical or emotional impairment.

When someone gets placed at maximum medical improvement the insurance doctor assigns a rating between zero and one hundred, but they don’t explain exactly what the rating means or what it does, and unfortunately, that insurance doctor has an incentive to conservatively rate an injured worker.

The doctors give low ratings because that’s how they’ve been selected, those doctors were picked by the insurance company because they know which doctors are too generous on the impairment ratings.

Why is the impairment rating important?

When someone gets an impairment rating it dictates their final benefit sometimes called permanent partial disability (PPD), which is a huge part of the claim.

The impairment rating dictates the compensation that the injured worker is going to receive as a result of their physical or emotional impairment.

When you’re injured on the job there are 3 kinds of lost wages, the lost wages you get when you’re treating, the lost wages you get after you finish treatment, and the primary one is PPD, but they don’t count lost wages in determining how much you get.

The intent of the Workers Compensation Act with permanent partial disability is to compensate for lost earning capacity, but you can still get an impairment rating even though you haven’t missed a single day of work, and you could even be earning the same or more and still get an impairment rating.

What’s unfortunate is that the insurance carrier’s doctors have the incentive to conservatively rate you, thereby depriving you of the benefits that you’re entitled to and that you should receive.