[VIDEO] What Benefits Are Injured Workers Entitled to Receive?

[VIDEO] What Benefits Are Injured Workers Entitled to Receive?

They’re entitled to receive three core benefits. The first of which would be income benefits. Income benefits are split out into three types of income benefits so stay with me. The first type of benefit, that’s an income benefit – it’s called Temporary Total Disability. The injured worker receives those benefits if they’re taken out of work due to their injury or if they’re placed on light duty restrictions from their doctor, and their employer is unwilling to or cannot provide or accommodate the light duty restriction that’s given to them by their doctor.

Now, this income benefit – Temporary Total Disability (TTD) – is typically two thirds of what the person makes on an average week. It’s not going to be a dollar for dollar amount that you’ve lost from the income due to the injury. For instance, if you earn $500 per week – unfortunately you’ll receive between $325-$360 or so per week. So that’s something that the injured worker needs to be aware of – because your bills certainly don’t get minimized by two thirds but your income does. That’s the first income benefit that they receive.

The second income benefit that you can receive is called Temporary Partial Disability or TPD benefits. That benefit is if you’re placed on light duty and your employer can accommodate you, and you’re working a light duty position. If you’re earning less money than you did before the injury, then the employer owes you two thirds of the difference between the two. So for instance, you’re earning again $500 per week, and now you’re working a light duty position that affords you $400 per week, the employer owes you two thirds of that $100 difference or $66 per week.

The third type of income benefit is called Permanent Partial Disability (PPD) benefits. After you’ve continued to treat with a doctor for a period of time and the doctor has pretty much nothing else that they can do to treat your injury, they’re going to list you as maximum medical improvement status. What that really means is there’s nothing else that they can do to treat you. You’re as good as you’re going to be. At that point the doctor is going to assign you a percentage of your disability. So let’s just say you’ve injured your back at work and the doctor is gone through the course of treatment and the doctor believes you’ve lost 10% of the use of your body or back due to the injury. That 10% gets thrown into a calculation and it comes out to a value that the insurance company owes you due to the loss of the percentage of the use of your body.

Those are the three income benefits. Now, you can also receive medical benefits. Medical benefits encompass exactly what it sounds like. Medical treatment from the employer and insurance company. Those benefits include all special procedures that a doctor may recommend for treatment – and include physical therapy, surgeries (if they’re recommended), injections if they are recommended, and prescription pills. Even travel to and from your doctors’ offices and to the pharmacy to pick up your prescriptions are benefits that are covered. Now obviously the medical benefits are paid directly to the person who is providing you the treatment. However, the mileage reimbursement is something that’s yours and yours alone.

The third type of benefit that an injured worker receives, is in the unfortunate event for if someone passes away due to their injury which are death benefits. Death benefits encompass the cost of funeral expenses and if there is a living minor child or perhaps a spouse, they may be due the Income benefits that I’ve already discussed and that would have been due to the person who has passed away from their injury. So those are the three core benefits that anyone who has been injured in Georgia with a company with workers’ compensation insurance. Those are the three types of benefits that someone is due. Call us today for more information.