A workplace injury can leave you struggling to get by. Your inability to work leaves you without the financial resources needed to pay for your basic necessities, including your housing and your food, let alone ensure that you receive medical care that’s necessary to recover to the point that you can return to work.
While the workers’ compensation system may be able to provide you with the benefits that you need to support yourself until such time as you can return to work, these payments aren’t automatically obtained. After all, the burden is on you to prove that your injuries or medical condition arose out of and in the course of your employment. As a result, a lot of workers’ compensation claims are denied when inadequate evidence is presented.
Commonly made workers’ compensation mistakes
If you want to maximize your chances of recovering workers’ compensation benefits, you need to know how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls that claimants fall into in these cases. Here are some of the most common mistakes that you’ll want to avoid:
- Waiting too long to seek medical care: If you’re injured in a workplace accident, you need to seek immediate medical attention. If you don’t, your employer’s insurance company will have more room to argue that you suffered your injuries outside of work or that your injuries are much less serious than you claim them to be.
- Not following through with recommendations: Your medical provider will likely have recommendations for follow-up care. If you fail to follow through with those recommendations, you’re opening the door for the insurance company to claim that your injuries aren’t all that severe. After all, they’ll claim that if your injuries were so serious as to leave you unable to work, you’d seek medical care as recommended.
- Exaggerating or lying about your injuries: If you’ve been injured at work, you need to be honest about the extent of your injuries. The insurance company will probably find out if you lie about your injuries or exaggerate them. This can lead to denied benefits and maybe even other legal consequences that you don’t want to face.
- Acting in a way that’s inconsistent with your injuries: The insurance company is going to look for any evidence that it can use to deny your claim. This may include the way that you present when you’re out in public. If you’re caught exercising at the gym or moving furniture into your house, the insurance company is going to use that against you to show that your injuries aren’t so severe as to prevent you from working. Therefore, you’ll want to be careful with how you present and what you post on social media.
- Improper reporting of your accident: It’s imperative that you report your workplace accident and your injuries to your employer as soon as possible. Delaying your reporting or foregoing reporting altogether can have negative consequences for your claim, including claim denial.
Craft the strongest workers’ compensation you can
You can’t leave anything to chance when you’re dealing with your workers’ compensation claim. If you haphazardly throw your case together, you put yourself at a very real risk of being denied the financial support that you need.
If you want to avoid that outcome, you need a strong legal professional by your side. With a legal ally in your corner, you can ensure that you not only gather the evidence that you need to support your claim but also that you avoid making the critical mistakes that often lead to claim denials.
So, if you’re ready to build a compelling workers’ compensation case in hopes of protecting your recovery and your future, now may be the best time for you to reach out to a legal team that’s experienced in this area of the law.