Getting injured or sick at work can be a scary thing, especially if you are not familiar with your company’s workers’ compensation policies. Legal businesses are required to have business insurance that covers workers’ compensation for their employees, so chances are you will be covered. To better acquaint yourself with the workers’ compensation process, read below to understand the process.
If you are hurt on the job, no matter how minor the injury, you must immediately alert your boss or supervisor of the injury. That means that you must go to the office of one of these superiors and fill out an injury report with all of the details of the injury from what you were doing to who was involved. The sooner you alert someone, the better so that if the injury does develop into something serious, there will be a record of it from the very first minutes. This helps out the insurance company and can aid the company you work for in implementing new procedures to prevent injuries in the future.
The most important thing to remember is to take injuries seriously. Even if you want to brush it off and go home for the day, you never know if it is going to develop into something worse overnight. Everything must be reported on the day that it happens.
Understand Your Options
When filing a workers’ compensation claim, you have two options for how you can receive benefits. The first option is through stipulations, which means that an injury or illness acquired on the job has long-term effects on your health. If this is the case, then the client will be categorized with a permanent disability, entitling them to either a lump sum to cover the costs of the permanent disability or monthly compensation to help them out, including free treatment of any injuries or long-term illness.
The second option is called compromise and release. In plain terms, this means that a client will get a larger sum of money than those with a stipulation claim because their injury is not permanent, so they will not need compensation for an extended period of time. This kind of claim is meant to help workers out while they get back on their feet and back to work. This article explains Compromise and Release (C&R) and walks you through how to file for this type of claim. It also helps better distinguish the difference between the two types of claims and who is eligible for which one.
Document Everything
From the very first moment of the injury or the moment that you start getting symptoms of a possible long-term illness, it is important to write down what has happened and make sure that if there are witnesses, they also give accounts of the incident. As stated before, an injury report is the first piece of documentation that will open up a workers’ compensation claim, so it is important to have a copy of that as well as any medical forms like doctor’s notes and bills kept together in a folder for the insurance company to look over.
Navigating the process of a workers’ compensation claim can be intimidating, but hopefully, you have a good company behind you that will support you throughout the process. Make sure to keep this article on hand and review the important points as you file your own claim.
