Worker Comp Generally

March 16, 2020

Update on Coronavirus Impact on PA Workers’ Compensation System

***UPDATE 3/17/20*** A statement was issued by Joseph DeRita, Director of the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Office of Adjudication:

“As you are all aware, Governor Wolf ordered the closure of all Pennsylvania state government offices for 14 days effective Tuesday, March 17, 2020. All hearings and mediations scheduled during that time are cancelled and will be rescheduled as soon as practicable. Some of the WCJ’s, who are already equipped to work from home, have already reached out to discuss rescheduling arrangements for mediations. Those will go forward. In addition, in an effort to provide some adjudicatory services, I have authorized the use of telephone hearings on a limited basis for Petitions to Approve C & R Agreements. Requests to schedule C & R hearings will be accepted beginning March 17, 2020 in the Southeastern and Eastern district offices only as described below. We hope to expand this limited service to the Central and Western districts by week’s end. Beyond that, we will be expanding WCJ telework capabilities generally to conduct telephone hearings on other types of petitions.

For now, the protocol to request a special C & R telephone hearing during the time of government shutdown is as follows: send an e-mail request to the Judge Manager of the district in which the case is pending (JM Karen Wertheimer, Eastern District,kwertheime@pa.gov and JM Holly San Angelo, Southeastern District, hsanangelo@pa.gov). Your request must include the case caption, dispute #, names and e-mail addresses of counsel and whether the case requires translation services (include language of testimony to be translated). WCOA staff will schedule the court reporter. The JM will re-assign the case to a specially selected WCJ who will then schedule and conduct the C & R hearing telephonically. Claimant must be present in Claimant’s counsels office. The C & R agreement must be notarized. The WCJ assigned to hear the case will advise how the telephone conference is to be arranged and how the C & R documents are to be transmitted prior to the telephone hearing.

March 13, 2020

PA Workers’ Compensation System and Coronavirus

by Glenn Neiman

By now, we are all too familiar with the Coronavirus (COVID-19). At this point, governments, individuals and businesses are still evaluating how best to protect each other and ourselves against this pandemic.

The Bureau of Workers’ Compensation is largely still open and operating on a normal basis. Hearings are generally still taking place, though the situation is being monitored. One hearing office, however, has been closed for at least a two week period. The Dresher Workers’ Compensation Hearing Office will be closed from March 13 through March 27, 2020. We are told that all hearings and mediations scheduled there are cancelled and will be rescheduled. The Dresher office serves injured workers who live in Eastern Montgomery County (or cases otherwise based in that region); cases based in Western Montgomery County, in the Malvern Workers’ Compensation Hearing Office, will take place as scheduled.

Brilliant & Neiman LLC will remain open, and our attorneys are available to injured workers. However, we will be trying to abide by CDC recommendations, and avoiding personal contact, including hand shaking. We also ask visitors to our offices to use hand sanitizer at our door.

March 4, 2020

PA Workers’ Compensation Hearings Moving From Bucks County Courthouse

by Glenn Neiman

Pennsylvania workers’ compensation hearings are generally held in each county in the Commonwealth. Some smaller counties may share hearing facilities, while more populous counties may have a second location. The county in which the injured worker resides is typically the county in which hearings will be held, provided the injured worker lives in PA.

For several years, hearings in Bucks County have been divided between Bristol (for Lower Bucks County) and Doylestown (for Central and Upper Bucks County). While that will still be the case, hearings in Doylestown which had been held at the Bucks County Courthouse will now be moved to the Bucks County Administrative Building (which is across the street from the Courthouse). For those unfamiliar with Doylestown, the Bucks County Administrative Building is actually the former courthouse. While the two buildings are across the street from one another, injured workers should be sure they are heading to the correct hearing location.

Bucks County is not the only one with multiple hearing locations. Several others split their cases between two offices. Montgomery County spreads its caseload between Malvern (for Western Montgomery County) and Dresher (for Eastern Montgomery County). Injured workers who reside in Northampton County may have hearings in Tannersville (North) or Easton (South). Philadelphians used to have the convenience of hearing locations in both Center City Philadelphia and Northeast Philadelphia, but the latter was closed several years ago.

December 17, 2019

PA Workers’ Compensation Maximum Rate Raised to $1,081.00 for 2020

by Glenn Neiman

As we have mentioned in the past, unlike Social Security Disability benefits, PA workers’ comp benefits have no cost-of-living increase. However, the maximum rate of workers’ compensation benefit that an injured worker can receive does increase annually. Unfortunately, this only affects injuries taking place in the new calendar year. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has announced that the maximum workers’ compensation rate for injuries taking place in 2020 will be $1,081.00. This is increased from the maximum rate for 2019 of $1,049.00.

The Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act sets forth the procedure for the calculation of the Average Weekly Wage (AWW). From this figure, we determine the temporary total disability rate, often just referred to as the workers’ compensation rate. Depending on the figures, the workers’ compensation rate is usually 2/3 of the AWW, though that is just the general rule. Mid-range AWW can result in a workers’ compensation rate of half of the maximum rate. A lower AWW can lead to a workers’ compensation rate at 90% of the AWW. On the other hand, an injured worker earning a very high wage would create a workers’ compensation rate limited by the maximum compensation rate, which would mean he or she would receive less than 2/3 of the AWW.

This can be a complicated area in the PA workers’ comp system, both through the calculation of the AWW and the workers’ compensation rate, as well as what can be included within the AWW calculation. Insurance carriers frequently make mistakes in these calculations (yet, rarely are these “mistakes” to the benefit of the injured worker).

November 13, 2019

PA Workers’ Compensation Uninsured Employers’ Guaranty Fund Gets New Legislation

by Glenn Neiman

The Uninsured Employers’ Guaranty Fund (UEGF), and its role in the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation system, has been discussed previously in this Blog. While the UEGF plays under different rules than every insurance carrier that writes PA workers’ compensation insurance coverage, and the UEGF can be incredibly difficult and frustrating to litigate against, there is no argument that the UEGF is an improvement over how things were, before the UEGF was enacted.

The different rules which apply to the UEGF were further set when the legislature passed, and Governor Thomas Wolf signed, Act 132 in October, 2018 (has it been a year already?). This new legislation provided new protections for the UEGF to enjoy, in an effort to protect limited resources in the face of the increasing number of claims (perhaps a more effective method of protecting UEGF assets, rather than leave injured workers without remedy, would be to focus on the employers who violate PA law by failing to carry PA workers’ compensation insurance).

Among the changes to the UEGF rules in Act 132 are:

November 1, 2019

Fusion a Pain in the Neck (or Back) for Injured Workers – Adjacent Segment Disorder and Adjacent Segment Pathology

by Glenn Neiman

The vast majority of work injuries in Pennsylvania heal with conservative treatment, allowing the injured worker to return both to work, as well as to activities of normal life. However, there are certainly the more serious injuries, where more invasive medical treatment is required.

Often the more invasive treatment options entail surgery. When we are talking about work injuries to the neck and back, the procedures we usually see are laminectomy, microdiscectomy and traditional lumbar fusion. For a description of each of these, and more information regarding these procedures, check out this post from Penn Medicine. For our purposes today, we are looking at the traditional lumbar fusion. As explained in the Penn Medicine article:

“Traditional spinal fusions are used to treat instability of the spine, scoliosis, severe degeneration of the discs, or a combination of these issues. A fusion involves using bone from the patient’s body to fuse one vertebrae to another. Often, metal screws (pedicle screws) are placed into the vertebrae to assist with the fusion process.”

October 23, 2019

Brilliant & Neiman LLC attending Rothman Orthopedic Institute’s Workers’ Compensation Conference

by Glenn Neiman

While we are very conscious of being available to our clients as much as possible, the practice of PA workers’ compensation law, and the litigation process, means we are not always in our offices. Sometimes, in addition to being at workers’ compensation hearings and depositions, our attorneys attend events or presentations that may help us better perform our job protecting the injured worker in PA.

And, so it follows, our attorneys were invited by Rothman Institute to attend their Workers’ Compensation Conference, being held all day on Friday, October 24, 2019. We sincerely apologize if this means we are not available to help our clients on that day directly, though our office staff certainly remains available (and can reach the attorneys for any emergencies). As our clients know, it is the practice of Brilliant & Neiman LLC for the clients to speak directly to the attorney, rather than being forced to always speak to support staff. We apologize for this deviation from our regular course of business.

The Workers’ Compensation Conference will no doubt provide our attorneys with additional tools to help us best protect the rights of injured workers in PA. Topics being presented will include 3-D printing in orthopedic surgery, issues with complex rotator cuff surgery, as well as general updates regarding treatment options for injuries to the neck, back and knees. The Workers’ Compensation Conference will be moderated by Dr. Nicholas Taweel, and will include presentations from Dr. Pedro Beredjiklian, Dr. Mark Lazarus, Dr. Michael Molter, Dr. Howard Yeon and Dr. Paul Steinfield.

September 16, 2019

Attorneys at Brilliant & Neiman LLC Admitted to Northampton County Bar Association

by Brilliant & Neiman

For years, we have had an office in the center of Allentown, and represented injured workers all along the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton corridor. We have attended workers’ compensation hearings at the Workers’ Compensation Judge office in Allentown (on Tilghman Street), as well as at the Northampton County Courthouse (where Northampton County workers’ compensation hearings are held). Indeed, both Allentown and Bethlehem/Easton appears on our website as communities we proudly serve. Recently, it occurred to us that we have never become members of the Northampton County Bar Association (NCBA). We have been members of the Bucks, Lehigh and Philadelphia County Bar Associations, so it certainly seemed like a logical step for us to join the NCBA.

While other bar associations simply welcome new members by having them complete an application, the NCBA handles these things in a more dignified and traditional fashion. Indeed, both of our attorneys (Dina Brilliant and Glenn Neiman) had to obtain sponsors, attend a quarterly NCBA meeting, and be formally approved to become members of the NCBA. And so, at the meeting on September 12, 2019, both Ms. Brilliant and Mr. Neiman were approved as members of the NCBA. We are proud to have been admitted into the NCBA, and we look forward to becoming further involved in the wonderful work the NCBA does in the community, as we have done with the other Bar Associations of which we are members.

We will continue striving to serve injured workers in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton community through our Center City Allentown office, as we do with injured workers in the Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia areas through our offices in Trevose and Warminster. And, for those injured workers elsewhere in the Southeastern to Central areas of PA, we also are happy to meet clients in various other locations conveniently located throughout the region.

September 12, 2019

The Job of Being a PA Workers’ Compensation Attorney

by Glenn Neiman

We have talked before on this blog about how an injured worker can go about choosing a Pennsylvania workers’ compensation attorney. Since this is such a common question, the issue is so important, and there are so many choices, we even have a page on our website devoted to the topic. So, this blog post is not about how to choose a workers’ comp lawyer. Instead, this entry will talk about one of the more important jobs we, as attorneys who represent injured workers, have in the process.

The vast majority of injured workers are not familiar with the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation system. From the outside, it can appear to be a complex and complicated arena. Indeed, it can even be complicated for those of us who work with the system every day. Perhaps the scariest aspect of this for the injured worker is simply the vast unknown.

We regularly participate in various injured worker message boards on the internet, providing general legal information to those who ask (we, of course, cannot provide legal advice to someone we do not represent). Many of the questions we see, from injured workers who are already represented by an attorney, as well as those who are not, deal with the PA workers’ compensation process and how it works.

June 5, 2019

Brilliant & Neiman LLC Attorneys Attend PA Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Annual Conference

by Glenn Neiman

Our attorneys were out of the office earlier this week, to attend the annual Pennsylvania Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Conference, in Hershey, PA. While we hate to have our attorneys both unavailable to help our clients, we feel it is important for us to attend these seminars. This conference is presented by the Bureau itself, so there is an opportunity to obtain information allowing us to stay current on all topics of interest in Pennsylvania workers’ compensation.

While there are not many attorneys, like us, who represent injured workers in attendance, we think listening in is helpful. Most of the attendees at this conference are not attorneys at all; they are adjusters, risk management and safety officials from all across PA. Additionally, many of the Workers’ Compensation Judges (WCJs) are in attendance. We can hear what these folks are being told regarding different aspects of the PA workers’ compensation system. This can help us anticipate issues and avoid some pitfalls that could pertain to our clients.

Topics addressed at the different sessions ranged from medical issues (including medical marijuana, the future of “telehealth,” and the role of nurse case managers), to internet surveillance, to Workers Compensation Medicare Set-Asides (WCMSAs), to different insights on how WCJs feel about varying issues.