Just before Thanksgiving, the Nevada Supreme Court published a turkey of a decision that robs injured workers of disability award money.  In Public Agency Compensation Trust v. Blake, 127 Nev. Adv. Op. 77 (2011), the court invalidated a long-standing  DIR regulation that addressed how rating doctors are to account for a prior PPD award for a re injured body part where the prior rating was done under a different edition of the AMA Guides to Evaluation of Permanent Impairment.   Nevada law currently requires that rating doctors use the 5th edition of...

  Does the following sound familiar?  You've checked the mailbox for the third time in an hour.  You finally see the postal carrier  drive down your street,   but  he does not  leave a compensation check in your mailbox.  You wave him down and angrily interrogate him  about whether your check could be lost or stolen.  Your briefly contemplate committing a  federal offense by taking the postman hostage until you get your miserable, but necessary check.  Instead, you stomp back...

When the adjuster sends you a benefit check if you are out of work due to your work accident, she should also send you a letter telling you how she calculated your average monthly wage (AMW). The AMW is  the amount  used to calculate your out-of-work  compensation benefits and your permanent partial disability award.  The higher the AMW, the greater the compensation  benefits,  and the greater the lump sum PPD award It is difficult for injured workers to know whether the AMW established by the adjuster for your claim is correct unless you have two...

The reality is that many injured workers are not offered permanent light duty jobs by their employers after their  treating doctors give them permanent work restrictions that prevent them from going back to their usual jobs.  Employers cannot be forced under Nevada workers' compensation law to give permanent light duty jobs to injured employees.  Instead, the injured worker is terminated from employment and is assigned a vocational rehabilitation counselor to try to find alternative employment or a formal retraining program.  The injured worker receives bi-weekly checks...

Part A The NCCI is an organization that keeps statistics on work injuries in the various states.  A recently released  August 2011 NCCI Research Brief by Lipton, Laws and Li  focused on prescription costs.  According to this study,  prescription drugs are 19% of the medical costs on an average claim.   The study showed that it was not the price of drugs that was responsible for increased prescription costs.  Instead, increased drug costs were attributable to doctors prescribing more drugs and more...

 There's good news and bad news.  The good news is that effective July 1, 2011, the mileage reimbursement rate for using your car to go to and from doctors and physical therapists visits increased from 51 cents per mile to 55.5 cents per mile.  Injured workers must have traveled more than 20 miles one way for medical care, or alternatively, have traveled a total of 40 miles or more during a week time period to qualify for reimbursement. (NAC 616C.150.) Use a mileage reimbursement form to send to your adjuster (or forward it to my office if you are already a...

Most industrial insurers will schedule injured workers for a second opinion before authorizing an orthopedic surgeon or a neurosurgeon's request to do a spinal fusion.  It is a good idea, even if the insurer isn't requiring it, to get a second opinion on whether a spinal fusion is the best treatment for you.  Many injured workers  immediately agree with their treating physician's recommendation for a fusion because they are still in pain after physical therapy and a course of medication, or because  injections didn't work.  A fusion surgery is...