I am often asked, “Why do injured workers need attorneys?”
WATCH: Do You Need a Workers’ Comp Lawyer? 4 Reasons Injured Workers Call Us.
- They want to be educated on the system – I think any injured worker, whether it’s a fairly severe injury or not, should at least understand what their rights are and how the system works.
- They start getting treated differently at work – Many employees feel that their employment relationship has become strained. They start feeling as though the employment atmosphere has become hostile.
- Their experience with the insurance company is difficult – A worker may feel the exchange with the adjuster and the insurance company isn’t very good. They feel they’d like some questions answered about what the insurance company is doing and why.
- The doctor/patient experience – Lastly, and probably the biggest reason people come to us, is that when they seek treatment from their doctor, it’s a totally foreign experience. It’s not like when you go to your family practitioner, your PCP, where they sit you down, and they spend a good amount of time with you and ask you all these probing questions to kind of figure out what actually is going on with you so that they can give you treatment and honestly give you quality care. It’s nothing like that.
Conflict of interest
People can quickly feel as though they’re being villainized for injuring themselves. They feel as though they’re getting a cursory examination and not quality care. I am often asked why that is the case. During my initial consultation, I tell everyone one reason is a massive conflict of interest happening behind the scenes. In my opinion, it’s one of the things that plague the workers’ compensation system.
When you pull back the curtain of the work comp system, you see there a conflict of interest between the injured worker, the physician that’s treating them and the insurance company, slash the employer. The physician doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds them a massive referral source in the insurance company. They have every reason to appease the insurance carrier and very little reason to appease the injured worker.
The result is that the injured worker gets really, really poor care and gets extremely frustrated. Ultimately, and understandably, they come in wanting to understand their rights. At Kaplan Morrell, that’s exactly what we do. We explain what their rights are. We tell them what they can do to get quality care in a system that doesn’t provide much. That’s one of the biggest things that we do to assist injured workers.
Know your rights
If you’re an injured worker, you may be wondering about your treatment. You want to know why it’s a little bit off or why you don’t think the doctor’s listening to you. That’s the big conflict of interest that plagues the system. You need to know your rights. Contact us at Kaplan Morrell for a consultation.
