Workers Compensation Insurance

Workers compensation coverage is designed to protect your employees. By law, you are required to carry this coverage for them. If an employee is injured on the job, workers comp provides them with specific types of coverage. The specific benefits and types of care provided for under workers comp depends on how an injury or illness occurred. Generally, workers comp insurance provides your employees with benefits coverage in six specific ways: Medical Care, temporary or permanent disabilityvocational rehabjob displacement, and death. Workers who are injured or made ill on the job may be eligible for more than one benefit.

Medical Care

When an employee gets hurt on the job, regardless of who is at fault they are entitled to receive any and all medical treatments necessary to deal with their injuries. This applies if something about the work they do causes them to become ill as well.

For example, if a construction worker is building a chimney as part of his job duties and falls off a ladder, he may sustain broken bones as injuries. These injuries would require immediate medical care at the hospital and follow up care with a doctor. If a pet grooming employee was bitten by a sick animal and became sick herself, she would require various types of medical care to treat the illness.

Since the injuries were sustained on the job, the construction worker’s medical care costs would be covered by workers compensation insurance. Likewise, the illness that the pet groomer contracted through her job would also be covered.

Medical care and treatment includes whatever may be reasonably required to treat or cure the illness or injury. This means that workers compensation may pay for medical care bills from hospital treatments and stays, doctor visits and care, physical therapy or restoration services, dental care, x-rays and other lab services, and chiropractic care and treatment. Workers comp also pays for any other medical related care that is deemed necessary and reasonable by the primary care physician.

Normally the employer is responsible for the employee’s medical care after the injury is reported. In the thirty days following a report of an accident or injury to an employee, the employer is responsible for obtaining or arranging medical care and treatment for him. After the initial thirty days, the employee may choose another doctor or medical center if she prefers. An employee can also notify the employer of care preferences before accidents or injuries happen. When the employer has been notified in advance that the employee has a personal physician of their own, the employee can receive treatment from that primary care physician from the date an injury or illness occurs. Choosing the physician who will treat an injured employee may vary if the employee and employer are opted into a Health Care Organization (HCO).