If you work for an employer who employs more than 50 employees and you have worked sufficient hours to qualify for FMLA time (29 U.S.C.2601), you may want to ask that any time you are off work for your work injury be designated as FMLA time, particularly if you expect to be released full duty before your full 12 weeks of FMLA time is up. Many employers require that any time off for a work injury be designated as FMLA time so as to reduce your 12 weeks of FMLA. A recent 9th Circuit case (Escriba v. Foster Poultry Farms) appears to question that, but the Department of Labor website still...

Yesterday I met with Amie Pellegrini, the Nevada business manager for IW Pharmacy, an online prescription company that services injured workers. My staff and I have been having such difficulty getting prescriptions filled timely for clients, with many administrators using intermediary drug companies that only confuse and delay medication fills. This company promises to quickly fill prescriptions for my clients, even those prescriptions that are denied and in the appeals process, so long as an attorney is on the case and advocating for the injured worker. This company handles any...

 This past weekend (November 7-9, 2014), I spoke twice at a conference of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.  Orthopedic doctors from various states attending the particular sessions I taught were mostly older, and many were hired by industrial insurance adjusters to do independent medical exams on claims where attorneys were involved.   I had just blasted so-called IME's in Nevada in my last blog post, so it was interesting that I now had to face a group of doctors for two hours each day to lecture and answer their questions about how a  claimant's' attorney...

 If you are an injured worker with an accepted workers' compensation claim in Nevada, you should not be receiving bills from hospitals, radiologists, labs, doctors, or physical therapists for treatment that was authorized by your adjuster. In fact, it is against the law for medical providers  on claims they know are accepted to bill the injured worker if they don't get paid quick enough or at all by the workers' comp. insurer. NRS 616C.135. Sometimes, I see bills that have a stamp that says the work comp insurer has been billed and that because it hasn't been paid, the injured...

 Any injured worker over the age of 30 with a serious work injury is likely to find some reference in  his or her medical records to degeneration of the body part being examined.  Degenerative disc disease, for example, is actually a normal  part of the aging process.  But insurers and their third-party administrators start to drool when they see those words in x-ray and MRI reports, because it gets them thinking about how they might reduce medical expenses or subtract from  the PPD award on the claim.   Some insurers are very aggressive about denying...

 If an injured worker in Nevada successfully convinces a hearing officer to reverse an adjuster's action on a claim, the insurer and/or the employer has the right to file an appeal to an appeals officer.  The insurer or employer must file their appeal within 30 days (plus 3 days for mailing of the hearing officer's decision).  The insurer or employer usually wait until the last possible day to file an appeal.  Whether the insurer has to comply and do what the hearing officer ordered depends on whether the insurer is able to obtain an order from an appeals officer...

Special Work Comp Laws Applicable to Fire Fighters A. Contagious diseases Exposure to contagious diseases while providing medical care at work is considered an injury by accident. NRS 616A.265 (2); testing and lifetime benefits for tuberculosis, hepatitis, and HIV are covered in detail for fire fighters. B. Cancer There is a rebuttable presumption of compensability if a fire fighter’s cancer develops or manifests itself out of and in the course of employment after 5 years of employment and the fire fighter was exposed to a known carcinogen and the carcinogen is reasonably related to...