What Should You Do When Your Employer Refuses to Send You to a Doctor After a Work Injury?

There are two major considerations when an employer won’t immediately send you to a doctor after a work injury. The first is your employer’s actual legal obligation to arrange medical care for you. The second is using other resources if your employer refuses to arrange treatment. Both come down to protecting two important things: your health and your paycheck.

Your Employer Is Required to Arrange Immediate Medical Care

California law requires employers to arrange medical care after you report a work injury, usually within a day of the report. Employers often hope the injury will “go away,” so they never have to report it to their workers’ compensation carrier. That is not only inappropriate, it’s against the law.

The employer is required to arrange appropriate medical care and specialists, if necessary, immediately following a work injury. If they refuse to do so, it may be time to contact an attorney, so the attorney can make the appropriate medical referrals and secure your right to continue seeing those doctors until your treatment is completed. The laws around this process are complex, and an attorney experienced in workers’ compensation law can effectively guide you through it.

If Your Employer Won’t Provide Medical Care

When an employer won’t provide immediate medical care after a work injury, it’s still important to document the injury. If your employer refuses to send you to a treating doctor, there is no documentation being generated by any doctor about the nature of your work injury and your need for treatment. And the employer and their insurance companies may try to take advantage of the absence of medical reporting to argue that if you were really hurt, you would have seen a doctor or gone to an emergency room. Obviously, you don’t want to hand them that argument.

So if you have other ways to secure medical treatment while the workers’ compensation issues are being sorted out, it is wise to use them so you have documentation you can present to a judge showing you reported to a doctor immediately, despite the delays you faced in the workers’ compensation system.

Report the injury. Secure treatment. Consider getting legal advice from a qualified lawyer if the employer and the insurance company are getting in your way.