If you sustain a work-related illness or injury, your employer pays for your medical care, either through a self-insured policy or through workers’ compensation insurance. The administrator of that California claim pays the medical bills. You need to tell your employer as soon as you get hurt so that they are aware of the injury, but also to protect your rights to get important medical care.
Since this care might be part of a California workers’ comp injury case, you must be prepared to keep track of all your doctor’s appointments and any details from them, such as your diagnosis. Your doctor’s insight is extremely important for telling the story of how you got hurt and how this injury is likely to affect you going forward.
So long as you filed your claim form and notified your employer immediately and your physician is well aware that the injury is related to work, you should not receive a medical bill. There are medical treatment guidelines used in California to identify what types of care an injured employee is available for. These include guidelines for schedules for care, acupuncture treatment, post-surgical treatment and chronic pain treatment. The goal is to help give physicians clear guidelines to give appropriate treatment for someone when they are injured at work.
If your doctor recommends treatment that is not in the guidelines, you may need to consult with your own physician for a second opinion or to work with a workers’ compensation attorney. If you have any problems in the process of trying to get workers’ compensation benefits in California, contact a San Francisco workers’ compensation attorney to get more information and help.