At Least Some Physical Therapists Part of Fl Work Comp System
There is a woman who is an employee in the office of an elected FL government official, who previously had worked in the office of some physical therapists, where part of her office duties were to prepare the reports from the therapist(s) to the work comp insurance companies about the injured employees they treated. It was very upsetting to her that the reports contained information that she knew to be false and hurtful to these employees. Of course, she felt she was not in a position to do anything about these lies that continued to bring harm to these employees who are caught in a system of lies and deceit. Where is the check and balance to keep false reports from being sent day in and day out – reports that destroy lives?
And who are these people who prepare these false reports? Who are these people who repeatedly refuse the treatments and medications that are prescribed by employees’ doctors? Who are these doctors, therapists, etc., who sell their services and reports to the insurance companies? Do they not have consciences, souls, an understanding of right and wrong – or does the almighty buck mean that much to them?
Is anyone in this Fl Work Comp system honest???? Is anyone in this system held responsible to honestly help the injured employees? Or is this system so corrupt that injured employees are lost as others turn away? Is it fair game for work comp insurance companies and attorneys to bury these employees alive – previously hard working, everyday Americans - under false reports through manipulative means such as paid for services from medical providers and, if those do not work, threats to the doctors who try to protect their patients.
This is all about money. Keep the work comp premiums and costs down for the employers. Keep costs down for medical providers. Keep those groups happy so they will stay in Florida and keep paying their taxes. Keep the money going to the work comp insurance companies and the attorneys who represent them. Not much money will go to attorneys who represent the employees as the legislators have just about set the laws where an employee now can hardly find an attorney to help them.
So what if that means throwing the injured employees under the bus? Who are these employees anyway? THEY are honest, hard working people who were hurt due to an accident at work and who have been thrown into a system that is NOT working to help their health as originally intended, but that continues to treat them as less than a second class citizen. Isn’t it amazing that some cases will see the work comp side spend more money fighting the employee’s health claims than the total they could have settled with the employee? They just want to beat the employee to a bloody pulp. What is the suicide rate in the FL Work Comp system???????
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
FL W/Comp Work Hardening – Therapy or Torment?
Imagine this - here you are – you have been on disability for a few years, when you have a change in work comp doctors. The change in docs is, in itself a separate story to be discussed in its own post. Interestingly, there has also been a new adjustor assigned to the insurance company case. In this story, there is no – and has never been - a nurse/case manager assigned to assist the injured employee in any way – and this new adjustor, unlike her predecessors, refuses to even answer a phone call or letter from the employee – tho her letters to the employee all end with “Please contact me if you have any questions”. Just some frill to dazzle the eyes of some beholders who will never know that the adjustor treats the employee like a second class citizen. Adjustors – again, another story!
So, shortly after the new adjustor and new doc are on board, the injured employee is sent to something called Work Hardening Therapy. It is kind of like day camp to get the employees back in physical shape to go back to work. The employee is advised that this will involve 4-5 days per week and 4-5 hours per day. But, as determined by the therapist, the employee is not physically able to be there more than 2 hours per day and 2 days per week for only very light stretching type exercises. The therapist recommends this schedule for a few weeks to see if stamina can be built up and days increased. The employee (who requires a cane or walker for mobility) has a bad problem with dizziness and balance – frequently losing balance and having to grab on to someone or something to keep from falling. This becomes a very well known situation among the staff and other “campers”.
Pressure is put on the employee to increase to 3 days per week or they may face having to be dropped from the program. As any injured employee in a work comp system knows – for sure in FL – you live in fear of doing anything wrong or your benefits and/or medications can be taken away from you in a heart beat – more stories here to come! So the employee agrees to move to 3 days per week. The next week consists of “camp” on Mon, Tues and Thursday. Note that the employee still has not been able to last any longer than 2 hours on any given day. By Thursday morning, the employee arrives already exhausted, weak and shaky. While working on the BTE machine – an electronic machine that puts injured patients through a range of mobility exercises with a variety of tensions, etc. – the employee is leaning on their cane, yet is very unstable, requiring the machine operator to put his body around the employee like a horseshoe to be there to catch the employee if needed.
The machine stops, the employee is very dizzy and tries to reach the table and chairs a little distance up the hall to sit down, but does not make it. They reach for one of the chairs to stable themselves, but the chair goes down and the employee loses all balance, tumbling across the hallway that is used for others to transport pallets and other equipment until hitting a wall with some force which stops the tumbling. The therapist assigned to this employee is not present this day, but the employee reports immediately to the other therapist that they think there is an injury. The employee asks the therapist what the protocol is in this case – do they go to the ER or what? The therapist advises the employee to GO HOME and calls the adjustor where a decision is made that the employee should NOT go to the emergency room, but should see the recently assigned pain management doctor the next day for a previously scheduled appointment.
This doctor does not look at the bruised and swollen ankle, does not look at the swollen wrist and does not check the shoulder. He does ask to see how high the hand can be raised in the air, which is barely shoulder high. He says nothing is wrong and do not seek medical help. If it gets worse, to contact him. Hmmm ….
Over the weekend, this employee – who has already been diagnosed with RSD and Fibromyalgia for many years – is in greater discomfort with the new injuries. The following Monday, they first contact the pain doctor’s office and send a fax to confirm. Then they see the regular therapist, who does get them into an orthopedic office and the results are a brace on a fractured ankle with a piece of bone dislodged and floating around, a cast on a fractured right wrist (a fracture to the left wrist was the start of the RSD) and an injury to the right Rotator Cuff with therapy to follow.
Interesting that a call was received by the employee from the pain doc’s office the following Friday to again tell the employee NOT to seek medical assistance for the fall in the Work Hardening Therapy! After letting the nurse speak, the employee then told the nurse about the visit to the ortho doc and the results. The employee was put on hold for 30 minutes, hung up, called back, was told “they are talking about you in the doc’s office – hold on”, was put on hold again for along period and no one came back on the line. When the employee tried to discuss the injuries from the fall with the pain doc on a following appointment, he asked if the employee was referring to the fracture that originally caused the RSD many years ago. He denied any knowledge of the injuries received in the Work Hardening Therapy and never did acknowledge them. If this sounds strange … well, this is only one story about this “doc”. Brings to mind an old song about a farm and on that farm there was a duck and that duck did say ….
Work comp insurance paid for the treatment of the injuries, though the employee continues to have problems from those injuries with complications from the original injury to their nervous system. The adjustor and the work comp attorney also totally ignored what the employee was put through in this situation and continue to seek ways to make this employee accept a settlement that would not cover medications and living costs for more than a couple of years, irregardless of the harm they are causing physically, emotionally and mentally to the employee.
Just from this story alone, there are other stories to be told…… Stay Tuned!
Click on work comp below and join our poll:
workcomp
So, shortly after the new adjustor and new doc are on board, the injured employee is sent to something called Work Hardening Therapy. It is kind of like day camp to get the employees back in physical shape to go back to work. The employee is advised that this will involve 4-5 days per week and 4-5 hours per day. But, as determined by the therapist, the employee is not physically able to be there more than 2 hours per day and 2 days per week for only very light stretching type exercises. The therapist recommends this schedule for a few weeks to see if stamina can be built up and days increased. The employee (who requires a cane or walker for mobility) has a bad problem with dizziness and balance – frequently losing balance and having to grab on to someone or something to keep from falling. This becomes a very well known situation among the staff and other “campers”.
Pressure is put on the employee to increase to 3 days per week or they may face having to be dropped from the program. As any injured employee in a work comp system knows – for sure in FL – you live in fear of doing anything wrong or your benefits and/or medications can be taken away from you in a heart beat – more stories here to come! So the employee agrees to move to 3 days per week. The next week consists of “camp” on Mon, Tues and Thursday. Note that the employee still has not been able to last any longer than 2 hours on any given day. By Thursday morning, the employee arrives already exhausted, weak and shaky. While working on the BTE machine – an electronic machine that puts injured patients through a range of mobility exercises with a variety of tensions, etc. – the employee is leaning on their cane, yet is very unstable, requiring the machine operator to put his body around the employee like a horseshoe to be there to catch the employee if needed.
The machine stops, the employee is very dizzy and tries to reach the table and chairs a little distance up the hall to sit down, but does not make it. They reach for one of the chairs to stable themselves, but the chair goes down and the employee loses all balance, tumbling across the hallway that is used for others to transport pallets and other equipment until hitting a wall with some force which stops the tumbling. The therapist assigned to this employee is not present this day, but the employee reports immediately to the other therapist that they think there is an injury. The employee asks the therapist what the protocol is in this case – do they go to the ER or what? The therapist advises the employee to GO HOME and calls the adjustor where a decision is made that the employee should NOT go to the emergency room, but should see the recently assigned pain management doctor the next day for a previously scheduled appointment.
This doctor does not look at the bruised and swollen ankle, does not look at the swollen wrist and does not check the shoulder. He does ask to see how high the hand can be raised in the air, which is barely shoulder high. He says nothing is wrong and do not seek medical help. If it gets worse, to contact him. Hmmm ….
Over the weekend, this employee – who has already been diagnosed with RSD and Fibromyalgia for many years – is in greater discomfort with the new injuries. The following Monday, they first contact the pain doctor’s office and send a fax to confirm. Then they see the regular therapist, who does get them into an orthopedic office and the results are a brace on a fractured ankle with a piece of bone dislodged and floating around, a cast on a fractured right wrist (a fracture to the left wrist was the start of the RSD) and an injury to the right Rotator Cuff with therapy to follow.
Interesting that a call was received by the employee from the pain doc’s office the following Friday to again tell the employee NOT to seek medical assistance for the fall in the Work Hardening Therapy! After letting the nurse speak, the employee then told the nurse about the visit to the ortho doc and the results. The employee was put on hold for 30 minutes, hung up, called back, was told “they are talking about you in the doc’s office – hold on”, was put on hold again for along period and no one came back on the line. When the employee tried to discuss the injuries from the fall with the pain doc on a following appointment, he asked if the employee was referring to the fracture that originally caused the RSD many years ago. He denied any knowledge of the injuries received in the Work Hardening Therapy and never did acknowledge them. If this sounds strange … well, this is only one story about this “doc”. Brings to mind an old song about a farm and on that farm there was a duck and that duck did say ….
Work comp insurance paid for the treatment of the injuries, though the employee continues to have problems from those injuries with complications from the original injury to their nervous system. The adjustor and the work comp attorney also totally ignored what the employee was put through in this situation and continue to seek ways to make this employee accept a settlement that would not cover medications and living costs for more than a couple of years, irregardless of the harm they are causing physically, emotionally and mentally to the employee.
Just from this story alone, there are other stories to be told…… Stay Tuned!
Click on work comp below and join our poll:
workcomp
FL Work Comp Laws Hurt FL Citizens
Legislators need to know what their laws are doing to Florida citizens. The work comp insurance companies and employers have lobbyists to constantly pursue them, present them with “facts” that are certainly presented in their favor and they have the money to get the attention of the Legislators. Injured employees have only a few dedicated attorneys and health professionals to stand by them. As a whole, the injured employees are not only too sick to organize a group effort to “lobby” the legislators, but they are also incredibly intimidated by the insurance companies, attorneys and employers so that they are afraid to say a word to anyone about the treatment they are subjected to on a constant basis. The laws have lowered the number of attorneys who are willing to take on injured employee’s cases. Some very questionable and unethical strategies involving the pressure applied to some doctors to get them to change their diagnosis or stop treating an employee are happening regularly and seriously need review by an ethics board.
The injured employees in Florida are great in number and what they have been and are being put through is unspeakable. Doctor prescribed medications and treatments refused – checks withheld – mental and emotional cruelty dished out to try to force employees to take settlements that will not cover their medications – trying to force work comp costs onto Medicare – false accusations of fraud - and more.
Yes, there are some employees who abuse the system. Just as many employers abuse the system – one in Panama City comes to mind immediately. Have the FL Legislators passed laws to hurt the employers because some have committed fraud??? Have the legislators taken away access to attorneys for employers? Have they forgotten that many (if not most) of the injured employees were hard working, productive citizens until an accident caused by an unsafe condition at work – something out of their control – changed their livelihood, health and everything for which they had worked. Many of these people had worked for many years – as much as 20+ years – and have paid their taxes, work comp, etc. Why now treat them as if they are criminals?
As the old expression goes, you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. But, in Florida, if you are an injured employee, get ready to be thrown out. You don’t abuse the honest people who have worked and been a part of the productive citizenship of Florida and are the victims of an accident that took away not only their employment, but also their social lives, their hobbies and in some cases, their ability to even go to church. The treatment dished out by the work comp insurance companies and attorneys rips apart self esteem, emotional and mental stability and families.
Is there not any kind of safeguard to stop the abuse? Even hockey players have penalty boxes and have to leave the ice for inappropriate behavior. Even animals are protected under animal cruelty laws. When will injured employees get protection and fair treatment? When will the employees’ doctors not be subject to threats if they (the docs) are not willing to change their diagnosis or release the patient from their care because they truly care about the patient and their health? When will the employees not have to be sent to the “hired guns” – the docs who are well known to write reports to favor the insurance companies – to prepare reports to dispute the doctors who have been treating the employees?
If the employee does have someone to represent them, it still takes a year or more to get a hearing in a court. If a medication is being refused, what good is it to wait for a year or more without the medication? Usually, the employee has to try to find another medication somewhere else or just give up taking that one and risk their health – Ding! That round goes to work comp and the employee’s health suffers again. How many rounds does an injured employee have in them – well, folks, that seems to be exactly the name of the game!!! Wear that injured employee out – make them too darn tired and/or too darn sick to get back in the ring – make them throw in the towel and walk away with a few pennies – or maybe even nothing! Be sure you make them crawl out of the ring, do not leave them with anything left of their former self.
Yes, there is a need for accurate diagnosis, but many of these cases turn into witch hunts!
It is an interesting fact that I have been told that there is not a kept statistic on how many injured employees in the Florida work comp system commit suicide. I hope this is wrong, because I think this is information that would very much tell how efficient the FL work comp system is performing. It seems that most docs I have seen and most knowledgeable people with whom I speak on the subject know of at least a handful of people who were honest injured workers who could no longer take the system and took the permanent way out. I have a feeling that the number would be frightening. To know that people were taking their lives out of desperation from being trapped in a life of illness and mistreatment by strangers who claim that they have the knowledge to make life altering decisions as lightly as if they were talking about the maintenance of a car and not a human being is surely a sign that the Florida government either does not care about the injured employees or looks upon all of them as a nuisance..
More To Come…Stay Tuned
The injured employees in Florida are great in number and what they have been and are being put through is unspeakable. Doctor prescribed medications and treatments refused – checks withheld – mental and emotional cruelty dished out to try to force employees to take settlements that will not cover their medications – trying to force work comp costs onto Medicare – false accusations of fraud - and more.
Yes, there are some employees who abuse the system. Just as many employers abuse the system – one in Panama City comes to mind immediately. Have the FL Legislators passed laws to hurt the employers because some have committed fraud??? Have the legislators taken away access to attorneys for employers? Have they forgotten that many (if not most) of the injured employees were hard working, productive citizens until an accident caused by an unsafe condition at work – something out of their control – changed their livelihood, health and everything for which they had worked. Many of these people had worked for many years – as much as 20+ years – and have paid their taxes, work comp, etc. Why now treat them as if they are criminals?
As the old expression goes, you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. But, in Florida, if you are an injured employee, get ready to be thrown out. You don’t abuse the honest people who have worked and been a part of the productive citizenship of Florida and are the victims of an accident that took away not only their employment, but also their social lives, their hobbies and in some cases, their ability to even go to church. The treatment dished out by the work comp insurance companies and attorneys rips apart self esteem, emotional and mental stability and families.
Is there not any kind of safeguard to stop the abuse? Even hockey players have penalty boxes and have to leave the ice for inappropriate behavior. Even animals are protected under animal cruelty laws. When will injured employees get protection and fair treatment? When will the employees’ doctors not be subject to threats if they (the docs) are not willing to change their diagnosis or release the patient from their care because they truly care about the patient and their health? When will the employees not have to be sent to the “hired guns” – the docs who are well known to write reports to favor the insurance companies – to prepare reports to dispute the doctors who have been treating the employees?
If the employee does have someone to represent them, it still takes a year or more to get a hearing in a court. If a medication is being refused, what good is it to wait for a year or more without the medication? Usually, the employee has to try to find another medication somewhere else or just give up taking that one and risk their health – Ding! That round goes to work comp and the employee’s health suffers again. How many rounds does an injured employee have in them – well, folks, that seems to be exactly the name of the game!!! Wear that injured employee out – make them too darn tired and/or too darn sick to get back in the ring – make them throw in the towel and walk away with a few pennies – or maybe even nothing! Be sure you make them crawl out of the ring, do not leave them with anything left of their former self.
Yes, there is a need for accurate diagnosis, but many of these cases turn into witch hunts!
It is an interesting fact that I have been told that there is not a kept statistic on how many injured employees in the Florida work comp system commit suicide. I hope this is wrong, because I think this is information that would very much tell how efficient the FL work comp system is performing. It seems that most docs I have seen and most knowledgeable people with whom I speak on the subject know of at least a handful of people who were honest injured workers who could no longer take the system and took the permanent way out. I have a feeling that the number would be frightening. To know that people were taking their lives out of desperation from being trapped in a life of illness and mistreatment by strangers who claim that they have the knowledge to make life altering decisions as lightly as if they were talking about the maintenance of a car and not a human being is surely a sign that the Florida government either does not care about the injured employees or looks upon all of them as a nuisance..
More To Come…Stay Tuned
Monday, February 18, 2008
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