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!
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