The fallout from the decision rendered by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in the Protz case is only just beginning. Since this decision will change how workers’ compensation cases are handled in PA (at least for the moment), the PA Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has now issued a statement on…
We have written volumes about the Impairment Rating Evaluation (IRE) process. It would now appear all of those words just became moot with the decision rendered by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which ruled the entire IRE provision to be unconstitutional. Back in September of 2015, we talked about the…
House Bill 18 has made it out of committee and is expected to be voted on early next week (Tuesday). This bill would drastically change how injured workers in Pennsylvania would get their medications (and what medications they could get). Basically, the Bill introduces “Evidence-Based Medicine” to PA workers’ compensation…
As we have done in the past, our attorneys will be at the Pennsylvania Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Conference in Hershey, PA, on June 12th and 13th. This is the one annual program run by the Bureau itself. There is a large attendance by adjusters, risk management and safety officials,…
On this blog we often discuss the beginning and ending of a workers’ compensation case in Pennsylvania. This is a natural, and obvious, area of litigation. However, there is also potential for dispute, and thus, litigation, when an injured worker goes back to work. This is especially true where the…
As attorneys representing the injured worker in Pennsylvania, there is a call we get far too often. It starts with the injured worker telling us that they lost their case before the Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) and need assistance in litigating an appeal before the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (WCAB). …
Since the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act covers “employees,” but not “independent contractors,” the relationship between these two terms is something we have previously discussed on our blog. A recent case from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania on this topic featured an added twist of a late answer. In Hawbaker v.…
When one thinks of an “injury,” typically one is imagining a sudden physical incident. Maybe a roofer falls from a ladder. A nurse pulls her back positioning a patient. A machine operator catches a hand in a device. While these are certainly injuries we see in PA workers’ compensation, not…
We have discussed the role of Utilization Review (UR) both on our website and on our blog. This helps demonstrate how important this concept is in the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation system. As the Bureau’s Workers’ Compensation Automation and Integration System (WCAIS) takes an increasingly bigger role in the practice of…
Representing injured workers in Pennsylvania, we see many severe injuries. One condition which certainly belongs in this category is Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), otherwise known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). This debilitating condition has been discussed on our blog in the past. Since a hallmark of RSD/CRPS is incapacitating…