After being injured on the job, you need compensation to offset your losses. After all, you’ll likely be unable to work and earn your wage, and medical bills will quickly come due. If you don’t have savings to cover these expenses, you might be at risk of eviction or foreclosure. But you don’t let the stress of your situation paralyze you into inaction. Instead, ready yourself to seek the workers’ compensation benefits you deserve.
As you do so, you’ll find that there are many difficulties associated with the process, any one of which could jeopardize your claim and your ability to continue to receive the workers’ compensation benefits that you need. One of them is the independent medical examination.
What is an independent medical examination?
Before granting your claim for benefits, the insurance company will want you to be assessed by a third-party medical professional. Their hope is that this third-party will be neutral, thereby giving a clear picture of the nature and extent of your injuries and thus the justification for granting or denying your claim.
That said, many of these medical professionals are contracted with the insurance company. Therefore, even though they’re supposed to be neutral, these medical professionals have a financial incentive to provide outcomes favorable to the insurance company.
How can you prepare for you independent medical examination?
Make no mistake, the outcome of your independent medical examination can have a profound impact on the outcome of your workers’ compensation case. Therefore, you need to be prepared heading into it. Here are some ways to do that:
- Practice articulating the extent of your injuries: When you go in for your examination, you need to be open and honest, but you also have to realistically portray your injuries. You shouldn’t minimize them or exaggerate them, as fibbing in either direction can lead to a bad outcome for your claim. You might find it helpful, then, to practice what you’re going to say when you’re asked to describe your injuries and how they were suffered.
- Review your medical records: Insurance companies love to place a worker’s injuries and pain on a pre-existing condition. The independent medical examiner will therefore consider this possibility. By reviewing your medical records, you’ll know where your claim is vulnerable and how you need to present your injuries in light of your past and existing medical conditions.
- Be cognizant of how you’ve acted leading up to your examination: Insurance companies have been known to surveil claimants in hopes of catching them acting in ways that contradict their claimed injuries. Therefore, when you go in for your independent medical examination, you should be prepared for the medical examiner to have pictures and videos of your post-injury actions. You need to be prepared to appropriately address these so that they don’t compromise your case.
Competently navigate every aspect of your workers’ compensation case
There’s a lot of work that goes into a successful workers’ compensation case. And as you navigate your claim, you have to be cognizant of the potential issues you could face. If you’re not, then you might be taken by surprise when your claim is denied.
Don’t let that happen to you. Instead, diligently work to gather the evidence and craft the compelling arguments necessary to protect your claim.
