My Employer Won’t Let Me See a Doctor After My Work Injury

If your employer will not send you to a doctor after you report a work injury, you have the right to select your own doctor and get treatment at your employer’s expense. California law requires the employer to arrange medical care promptly, generally within about a day of the report, and sooner than that if the injury is an emergency. This article covers what to do when an employer ignores your report, what your right to treatment actually includes, and why the doctor you end up with matters as much as getting seen at all. It does not cover disputes over treatment the carrier has already authorized.

WHAT IF YOUR EMPLOYER IGNORES YOUR INJURY REPORT?

I get many calls from injured workers who tell me the same story. They reported the injury to their employer, and the employer either ignored the report entirely or told them to go see their own doctor, as if the injury never happened.

Neither response is acceptable under California law. Sending you off to your personal physician on your own insurance is not the employer meeting its obligation. It is the employer treating a work injury like a private medical problem, and it leaves you paying for care that is not supposed to cost you anything.

HOW FAST DOES YOUR EMPLOYER HAVE TO ARRANGE TREATMENT?

Quickly. When you suffer a work injury, California law gives your employer roughly one day, about 24 hours from the report, to arrange medical treatment for you. If the injury is an emergency, that window collapses to immediately, and the employer has to send you or arrange for you to be seen at an emergency room.

The reason the law moves this fast is that delay damages both your health and your claim. Untreated injuries get worse, and a gap between the injury and the first medical record is the first thing an insurance carrier points to when it wants to argue the injury did not happen at work.

CAN YOU PICK YOUR OWN DOCTOR IF THEY REFUSE?

Yes. The bottom line is that if an employer refuses to send you to a qualified doctor to evaluate your work injuries for treatment, you have the right to select your own doctor and get that treatment at the employer’s expense.

That right is real, and it is the leverage most injured workers do not know they have. It is also where people run into a practical problem that is worth understanding before you start calling offices.

WHY THE RIGHT DOCTOR MATTERS MORE THAN ANY DOCTOR

The challenge with simply picking any doctor is that many physicians do not take workers’ compensation cases at all. Others will take the case but do not know how to report the injury properly, which is a different problem and a costly one.

A workers’ compensation judge evaluates what benefits are owed based on what the doctors write. There are forms the physician has to complete at each visit, and when those are not filled out correctly or on time, your benefits get delayed even though nothing is wrong with your underlying claim. The more complex the injury, the more this matters. You need doctors and specialists who can describe the nature of the injury, explain why it is related to your work, and spell out specifically what treatment you need in order to recover.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TREATMENT IS FINISHED?

Once the doctor has finished treating your work injuries, the reporting shifts from treatment to evaluation. If you have a team of physicians involved, which for a serious injury might include an orthopedic surgeon and an internal medicine specialist, each contributes to that picture.

At that stage the doctors describe what permanent disability compensation you are entitled to and what future medical care you are likely to need. That is the reporting the entire value of your case rests on, which is why getting the right physicians involved early pays off at the end rather than just at the beginning.

I have spent over 30 years handling California workers’ compensation cases from my office in Santa Ana, and being stonewalled on medical treatment is one of the most common calls I get. Not every injured worker needs an attorney, but if your employer is refusing to arrange care, you are already in a dispute whether you wanted one or not. This article is general information about California workers’ compensation and is not legal advice for any individual case.

Thomas F. Martin, PLC offers a free 30-minute case evaluation. Call (714) 547-5025.