Once an injured worker proves an entitlement to workers’ compensation benefits in PA, only certain things allow a Pennsylvania workers’ comp insurance company to stop paying those benefits. Some of the more common things would be convincing a Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) that the injured worker has fully recovered, has…
Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Lawyer Blog
We Are The Law Firm For The Injured Worker In PA
We are not the official workers’ compensation law firm of the NFL. Or of any major sport. What does that even mean? We do not have a slick marketing department, which puts our faces on billboards or TV. What we ARE is the law firm for injured workers. Our focus…
Scarring or Disfigurement is Compensable in Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation
We were talking to a potential client the other day, and the client mentioned in passing about a scar that she had from the work injury. Like many injured workers, she did not know that a scar can actually be compensable. She believed, as many injured workers do, that one…
Withdrawal From Labor Market Ends PA Workers’ Comp Wage Loss Benefits
One of the common questions we hear from injured workers is “What happens if I retire?” or, more than you may imagine, “What happens if I move out of this Country?” In either case, the answer is that your wage loss benefits are placed in serious jeopardy. Medical benefits are…
Court Refuses to Allow PA Workers’ Comp Insurer to Avoid Benefits for Work-Related Cancer
Several years ago, we related that the Pennsylvania legislature passed Act 46, which created a presumption that cancer suffered by veteran firefighters is related to their work duties. This amendment to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act was largely cheered by all (other than workers’ comp insurers, of course!). The Supreme…
Domestic Service Workers Excluded From PA Workers’ Compensation Act
As we discuss in our FAQs on our website, not every person who works in the State of Pennsylvania is covered by the PA Workers’ Compensation Act (Act). Certain categories of employees are excluded from the protections of the Act for various reasons. One of those exclusions applies to those…
What Does a PA Workers’ Comp Insurance Company Get When an Injured Worker is Released to His or Her Full-Duty Job? Not a Thing!
Once an injured worker in PA establishes a right to workers’ compensation benefits, such benefits can only be stopped by the workers’ comp insurance carrier under certain circumstances. Two of the most common involve litigation before a Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) – proving to the WCJ that the injured worker…
PA Workers’ Comp Insurer Assessed Penalty for Non-Payment of Medical Bills
When an injured worker in PA gets medical treatment for his or her work injury, and a bill is submitted to the workers’ compensation insurance carrier, the insurance carrier has three choices. They can pay the bill (within 30 days), initiate the Utilization Review process (to challenge whether the treatment…
Too Many Total Knee Replacements Being Performed?
As far back as 2008, our blog reported on a marked increase in the number of total knee replacements that were being performed. This trend seems to have been continuing, and, perhaps, not for the best. According to a recent article in The Intelligencer, a rather high number of patients…
When the First Day of Disability is not the First Day of Disability – Welcome to the Wacky World of PA Workers’ Comp
In litigating a workers’ compensation case in Pennsylvania, we fight about many aspects of a case. Certainly, we have had disputes over when an injured worker was actually “disabled” from his or her job. As highlighted in a recent decision by the Commonwealth Court of PA, though, sometimes the exact…