​Experienced ILLINOIS Workers’ Compensation Lawyers
& CHICAGO Injury Lawyers

Medical Benefits for Road Construction Workers

Chicago Law Firm for Road Construction Workers Injured on the Job

Road construction workers and other employees who work near vehicle traffic are at risk of being struck and seriously injured by a car while performing their jobs. Workers have been injured or killed in back over accidents, collisions between vehicles and mobile equipment and accidents involving getting crushed between objects and equipment. You should seek medical attention right away if you are injured or made sick on the job and let your doctor know your condition is job-related. If you are a road construction worker who needs medical benefits, you should give us a call. At Katz, Friedman, Eisenstein, Johnson, Bareck & Bertuca, our seasoned Chicago workers’ compensation lawyers have sixty years of experience advocating for injured workers.

Medical Benefits for Road Construction Workers

If you are a road construction worker who is injured or becomes sick from your job in Illinois, you will be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits Among these benefits are medical benefits. The medical benefits under the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act include any medical care reasonably required to relieve a worker for work-related injuries. Sometimes insurers and treating physicians have different ideas about what constitutes reasonably necessary medical care.

Reasonable necessary medical care would include emergency room care, first aid, transportation to emergency care, doctor’s visits, prescriptions, medical devices, surgeries, rehabilitation, and even institutional care.

You can choose your doctor and hospital, while the employer’s insurer will be responsible for paying the bills. However, if your employer belongs to a Preferred Provider Program (PPP), you will be able to make two choices of providers that belong to the program. If you elect to go outside the PPP for a provider, you will only have one choice. Your treating provider will need to give a full report to the employer or the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission upon request.

At your first visit to a health care provider, it’s important to let the office know that you were injured on the job as a road construction worker. This allows the provider to bill the workers’ compensation insurer directly. In many instances, particularly when complex and expensive treatments are involved, the provider will need to obtain pre-authorization from the insurer.

Independent Medical Exams

Your treating physician has an important role to play in making sure you get benefits you need after your work-related injury. Sometimes his or her testimony will wind up being critical to the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission’s assessment of whether you’re entitled to a particular benefits. For example, if you were crushed between equipment and a vehicle while working on a road, and need to have multiple surgeries, but an insurer disputes that second or third surgery is reasonably necessary, your physician’s testimony in a hearing would be critical. Also important, however, are independent medical exams (IME). Despite their name, IMEs are not independent.

Often insurers ask for an IME because they are skeptical about a worker’s claim or want to find some way to limit her benefits. They choose the IME doctor a worker must see, and in many cases, this choice is made based on the doctor’s past record of siding with insurers and recommending only conservative treatments, even for catastrophic injuries. Learning this may make you reluctant to go, but if your employer’s insurer asks you to attend an independent medical exam (IME) you will need to attend, or you may have to forego not only your medical benefits, but other workers’ compensation benefits, as well. You should give us a call about your claim.

If we serve as your attorney, we will look for ways in which the IME report and the IME doctor’s testimony are not as credible as your own treating physician’s testimony. For example, if the IME doctor saw you for 1 hour, and didn’t believe your pain after an equipment accident was severe enough to warrant further treatment, but your treating physician observed you over the course of a year and believed your pain was significant, it might be worth pointing this out to show the IME doctor is not credible.

Consult a Seasoned Chicago Workers’ Compensation Firm

If you need to obtain medical benefits as an injured road construction worker, you should hire a seasoned Chicago workers’ compensation lawyer. Our firm has more than 60 years of experience representing clients in personal injury lawsuits, workers’ compensation claims, and SSDI claims in Quincy, Rockford, Champaign, and Aurora, as well as Winnebago, Kane, Sangamon, Cook, and Adams Counties. Call us at 312-724-5846 or complete our online form.