Leaving no stone unturned is critical to managing your workers’ compensation costs. With the number of steps from injury to resolution; the number or people involved from physicians to adjusters; and the number of possible outcomes from a band-aid to a large insurance settlement you cannot leave any single step to memory.
Create System to Ask All the Right Questions
Certain questions must be asked, forms must be filled out, and precautions should be taken. Your injury management system should ensure all the questions one should ask the physician on the telephone to be sure every “i” is dotted and ever “t” is crossed.
Formalize your questions in a checklist so these questions are asked uniformly; it’s not something that should be done on an ad hoc basis.
9 Questions to Ask Injured Worker’s Treating Physician
- Introduce yourself and give the injured employee’s name, mentioning the employee has authorized you to speak with the doctor
- Get and give all contact information.
- Offer to email authorization so the doctor may discuss the employee’s condition.
- Ask for diagnosis and whether it is work related.
- Ask how the employee is responding to treatment.
- Ask if prescribed medications could interfere with the employee’s job.
- Does the physician recommend any significant limitations?
- Can the employee perform a transitional duty job? If yes, obtain the employee’s work restrictions.
- Is there anything else that I should know, that would help our employee recover more quickly?
This open-ended question gives the doctor an opportunity to provide information that is additional and helpful to the employer or the employee.
Keeping up with all these details assists your company in getting your employee healthy and back to work.
Author Michael Stack, Principal, Amaxx LLC. He is an expert in workers compensation cost containment systems and helps employers reduce their work comp costs by 20% to 50%. He works as a consultant to large and mid-market clients, is co-author of Your Ultimate Guide To Mastering Workers Comp Costs, a comprehensive step-by-step manual of cost containment strategies based on hands-on field experience, and is founder & lead trainer of Amaxx Workers’ Comp Training Center. .
Contact: mstack@reduceyourworkerscomp.com.
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