Your Rights for Medical Treatment

This blog post deals with the kind of medical treatment you can expect if you’ve been hurt on the job.  Georgia law says that if you’ve been hurt on the job, your employer and workers compensation insurer are required to give you medical care required and likely “to effect a cure, give relief, or restore the employee to suitable employment.”

However, there are strings attached!  Unless it’s a true emergency, you typically cannot simply pick any doctor for your medical care.  If your employer has a “panel of physicians” on the wall at work (often in the break room), you’re usually required to select a doctor off that panel.  If you don’t follow the rules on selecting a doctor, you may end up having to pay for your medical care yourself!

What if you don’t like the doctor that you’ve selected?  Are you required to keep going to that doctor?  Fortunately, the answer is probably not.

Georgia workers compensation law gives you the right to make one change from one doctor on the panel to another doctor on the panel.  In certain circumstances, if the employer or insurer has not followed the rules regarding your medical care, they may have lost control of the medical part of your claim, and you might be able to select a different doctor who is not even on the panel.

The best way to find out your rights to medical treatment and compensation under the workers compensation laws of Georgia is to speak with a lawyer.

I would be happy to meet with you in my office at no charge to you to discuss your workers compensation case and to discuss your legal rights and responsibilities.  This meeting also gives you the opportunity to get to know me and for me to get to know you and your precise legal problems. 

I've been practicing law in the metro Atlanta area since graduating from UGA Law School in 1986, and I've represented hundreds of injured men and women with their workers compensation cases during over 25 years of practicing law.

For more information, visit my website at www.gentrylawfirmgeorgia.com or call or email us for a free in-person consultation at 770-425-5573 or bill@gentrysmithlaw.com.

William C. (Bill) Gentry