Keep track of your medical visits, treatments, missed work days and anything relevant, and keep all documents that back up your logs.
Workers compensation is in place to help injured employees get through the tough recovery period and manage to survive when not being able to work as much as before, or at all. Many industries expose workers to great risks, and the injuries are often quite serious.
When it comes to neck injuries, they are potentially extremely dangerous, as they can leave someone disabled or even lead to deadly trauma. The seriousness of your injury, along with other factors, will eventually decide how much you can receive through a workers compensation claim.
What to Do after a Neck Injury
If you want to make sure that you are eligible to receive benefits, you must follow the necessary steps to prove the extent of your injuries and how they impact your life, and show the judge that they were caused by your working conditions or the nature of your work tasks. A St. Louis workers compensation attorney can guide you through this process.
The following steps are important if you want to receive compensation for your neck injury:
- Make sure that you are seen by a doctor right away and get written medical reports about your injury. Ask the doctor to include possible outcomes and developments of your injuries, and recommendations for other specialists or treatments.
- Report the incident to your superiors, in writing. Give them details about what happened, but keep everything concise and neutral in tone. This written report must be done in maximum 30 days from the incident.
- Document everything yourself! Keep track of your medical visits, treatments, missed work days and anything relevant, and keep all documents that back up your logs.
- As mentioned above, discuss your case with a St. Louis work injury attorney to help you support your claim. Make sure they have experience in similar cases.
Possible Weekly Payments
If your injuries keep you off work (partially or completely) your workers’ compensation claim is meant to bring you an income to help you pay your bills. Your weekly payment amount depends on how much you used to make before the injury, and how serious the injury is.
If you are only missing part of your working hours because of your injuries, your weekly payments will be calculated from the amount of hours you miss, and not the amount of hours you used to work in total. But if you miss work completely, it will be calculated from your total income.
Vocational Rehabilitation
There are cases when a neck injury prevents the worker from ever coming back to the job or industry he used to work in. If this is your case, you can ask for vocational rehabilitation, which includes courses and counseling meant to help you find a new line of work.