Getting hurt at work is a very real concern, not only for employees, but for company owners as well. Workers’ compensation, a form of insurance providing financial compensation and medical benefits to employees injured on the job, is a safeguard for employees and sometimes a source of frustration for CFOs and business owners.
What is Workers Compensation?
Workers’ compensation is offered in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of an employee’s right to sue an employer for negligence. Laws for workers’ comp were established to provide employees with benefits to get them through times of injury sustained on the job. As such, a person only becomes eligible for workers’ compensation benefits when he or she sustains an injury, illness, or disease because of something occurring on the job. The payments are generally based on the ability of the worker to find part time employment. For example, workers compensation attorneys are more likely to win high compensation for a worker who is paralyzed from the neck down than one who has lost an arm and can still find work.
Isn’t that kind of subjective?
In a way, yes. Workers compensation attorneys know that the same physical loss affects different people in different ways. For example, a worker who loses a finger on the job might lose some professional facilities if she is a banker, but will lose all professional facilities for a pianist. The compensation depends on the way a particular injury affects the professional life of a particular worker.
What should CFOs know?
Many CFOs are unnerved by the mounting costs of workers compensation. It’s an understandable fear. After, all medical inflation has grown over 48% in the last decade. It would be wise for them to look at how freely and chronically doctors are prescribing narcotics to injured workers. Such prescriptions are drastically raising the costs related to workers compensation in many states.
If you’ve been hurt on the job, contact a workers compensation attorney to learn more about the benefits to which you may be entitled. Recovering from an injury is stressful enough without having to worry about fighting for the compensation you deserve.