The ultimate goal of the workers’ compensation system is to help an employee recover and get back to gainful employment. To assist with this, Minnesota’s workers’ compensation system provides for a variety of treatments depending on your injury and your doctor’s recommendations. Because while helping the employee get healthier is the end game, there are some limits and restrictions that prevent employees from seeking overly expensive or unhelpful treatments. We explore those treatment parameters and the exceptions to the guidelines in today’s blog.
Injury Treatment Parameters
There are a myriad of treatment parameters that can be applied given the specifics of your work injury. These parameters have been put in place to avoid what the state sees as wasteful medical expenses and to ensure the employee continues to make progress in their recovery. After all, there’s no point in continuing treatment if you’re not getting anything out of it.
You can look through all the legal statutes of some of these parameters, but we’ll share a few examples so that you can get a better understanding of what we mean when we say that work injury treatment has some rules and restrictions. For example, assuming these treatments are approved by your treating physician, he are some restrictions you’ll need to keep in mind:
- If acupuncture is approved, you can receive a maximum of 2-3 sessions per week for 1-3 weeks, decreasing thereafter. You can receive a total of 12 weeks of acupuncture therapy, but gainful improvements must be achieved within 3-5 sessions.
- For chiropractic adjustments, you can receive 1-5 adjustments for the first 1-2 weeks, again decreasing thereafter for a total of 12 weeks of treatment, and again gainful improvements must occur within the first 3-5 treatments.
- Botox injections are not approved for any type of back pain or condition.
- You can receive a maximum of two SI joint injections in the same site.
These are just a few of the rules that govern how medical treatment is dispensed after a work injury, and we can explain some of the restrictions that pertain to your specific injury so that you know what is and isn’t available to you. However, if you keep in mind that treatment is not designed to continue indefinitely and that the insurance company wants to see improvements, odds are you won’t run into many surprises with your care.
Exceptions To Treatment Parameters
As you can rightfully assume, not all work injuries are created equal, and they all won’t fit nicely in the countless parameters set forth by the state. Therefore, some exceptions allow an injured worker to receive more treatments per week, more weeks of care, or have their surgeries covered by work comp insurance without first going through a set period of conservative methods. The state allows a person to depart from the injury treatment parameters if they meet one of the following exceptions:
- A documented medical complication.
- The existence of a need for additional treatment to assist the employee in the initial return to work where the employee’s work activities place stress on the part of the body affected by the work injury.
- Treatment has reached the maximum allotment proposed by the parameters, but two of the following criteria can be documented by medical records.
- An employee’s subjective complaints are improving.
- An employee’s objective complaints are improving.
- An employee’s functional status is objectively improving.
- An incapacitating exacerbation of the employee’s condition.
For more information about the parameters and exceptions, or for help with your injury claim, trust your case to the experienced lawyers at Hey Workers today.
