Workers’ compensation cases often evolve from merely a worker suffering an injury and filing a claim into something more when the workers’ feel that they are being gamed or played for a fool. Much outrage follows the discovery of a worker, who after obtaining some level of workers’ compensation payment, is later found to have exaggerated his or her injuries.
What is less noted, perhaps because it is so pervasive as to be standard operating procedure, is the habit of many employers playing “hide the ball” with workers over workers’ compensation claims.
An important point is made by a post written by a workers’ compensation defense attorney. He notes that when the average worker is injured, he or she is suddenly faced with dealing with a very different world than their ordinary day on the job. Lawyers, doctors, medical examinations, hearings, and significant amounts of very foreign sounding terms and procedures.
They may be very confused and suspicions. They may believe that everyone is out to deny them benefits for their very real injuries. If their employer is unresponsive, they may impute bad motives, even if the employer merely thinks they are protecting themselves from fraudulent claims.
Ignorance rarely breeds trust. This is why workers who have been injured on the job come to us. They realize they need a guide who is unequivocally on their side to help them through the maze that a workers’ compensation claim presents.
For a construction worker or a warehouse workers, much of the claims process is intelligible, and employers often further exacerbate the problem by failing to help them understand what is happening and why. That may not be very cost effective in the end.
Source: Workerscompensation.com, “Use This One Old Trick to Reduce Your Workers Comp Claim Costs,” J. Bradley Young, March 5, 2014