Can I Return to Work While Receiving Workers’ Compensation Benefits in Nebraska?
Most workers’ compensation claimants return to work while still receiving follow-up care for their work injury, and some work light-duty versions of their jobs while receiving temporary partial disability benefits during their recovery.
The simplest workers’ compensation claim imaginable would be one that involves an acute injury that does not affect an employee’s ability to work. For example, an office receptionist falls and injures her foot on Friday afternoon. She initiates a workers’ compensation claim and goes to the emergency room. On Monday morning, she uses crutches to get to her desk and then sits down and does her job exactly as she used to do before she got injured. While employers may prefer that workers continue their jobs regardless of their health, this isn’t always feasible. Even though workers’ comp laws intend to protect the rights of people injured at work to get their treatment paid for without the hassle of litigation, if you look closely at the workers’ comp paperwork, it is obvious that the priority is the financial interests of workers’ comp insurance, not your health and wellbeing. If your employer is pushing you to go back to work before you are healthy enough for this, contact an Omaha workers compensation lawyer.
Your Employer Wants You to Return to Work as Soon as Possible
Consider the example of the receptionist with the injured foot. She will need at least a few follow-up doctors’ visits and perhaps physical therapy after her original trip to the ER. The follow-up treatment is compensable under the workers’ compensation claim, and the receptionist continues her work, starting as soon as she has recovered enough to do her job duties.
Injured workers who suffer chronic pain after a work injury have the right to have the employer’s workers’ comp insurance pay for physical therapy and other forms of pain management related to the work injury. In the context of workers’ compensation law, this is called palliative treatment, even if you are healthy enough to work when you receive it.
Benefits That Put Cash in Your Bank Account are Usually Contingent on You Returning to Work
If your injury leaves you unable to do your usual job, such as welding, but able to do other work tasks, such as data entry, workers’ comp wants you to do as much work as you are capable of doing. When you must do a light-duty job because of an injury, you can get partial disability benefits, equal to two-thirds of the difference between your ordinary job and your light-duty job. If and when you recover to the point that you are able to do your old job, then you stop receiving partial disability benefits and go back to your old job at your old pay rate.
Contact Andres Law Offices, PC LLO, About Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Disputes
An Omaha workers’ compensation lawyer can help you if your employer wants you to go back to your old job duties before you are able. Contact Andres Law Offices, PC LLO in Omaha, Nebraska.