What should you do if your employer’s posted panel of physicians only includes industrial clinic doctors?
Georgia law gives your employer the right to choose where you get medical care if you are hurt on the job. We may be able to get you to a different doctor down the road but in most cases the first doctor you will see will be one that appears on a “posted panel” of doctors that should be located in a break room or other central location.
Frequently, your employer’s insurance company will give your employer the names of doctors they want for the posted panel. Why? Because insurance companies want you to treat with doctors who are less likely to take you out of work, who will not order expensive tests and who will report their findings directly to a nurse case manager or directly the insurance adjuster.
Just because a physician has an M.D. after his name does not mean that the doctor has your best interests at heart.
Case in point are doctors who work at industrial clinics. If you didn’t already know this, industrial clinics are set up to serve insurance companies. In most cases all of their business comes from insurance companies.
Doctors that work in these clinics are not specialists and they understand that the insurance company is in business to make money. And insurance companies don’t make money paying you weekly wage benefits or coming out of pocket for MRIs, CT scans and other expensive tests.
Industrial Clinic Doctors Often Take Incomplete Medical Histories
Because industrial clinic doctors are not looking out for you, you need to protect yourself. One problem that I see frequently arises when the industrial clinic doctor only writes down your complaints of pain and loss of function in one body part, even if you report problems in another body part.
For example if you fall and hurt your lower back, your right shoulder, left knee and left ankle, the industrial clinic doctor may only write down in his notes that you hurt your right shoulder.
The problem with incomplete records like this is that they will follow you for the rest of your case. If the industrial clinic doctor only notes a problem with your left shoulder, the insurance company will instruct him to only treat your left shoulder. The doctor will literally refuse to look at your lower back because that body part is “not authorized.” If you wait too late to insist that you actually have four or five body parts injured, you will have to ask for a hearing before the State Board of Workers’ Compensation. Judges will look at the medical record and if there is no reference to your lower back or left knee, you may be denied care
I tell potential clients that they have to insist that the industrial clinic doctor write down your complaints about every injured body part. Whenever possible ask for a copy of the medical record associated with your visit. If the doctor tries to pressure you into saying that a particular body part is not really hurt or that your injury happened at home, you have to be firm that you were hurt at work.
Many times I spend the first few days of my representation of a new client correcting and updating the record to make sure that the insurance company adjuster knows about all of your injured body parts.
If you have been sent to an industrial clinic doctor but are concerned about the treatment you are receiving or about the records that are being generated in your case, please call me – I’d be happy to speak with you at no charge.
Jodi Ginsberg
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