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Adding Medical Conditions to Your Ohio Workers' Comp Claim

Helping Me, That's HNB

If You’re Denied Help for an Additional Condition from a Job Injury, You Can Fight Back

Serious injuries on the job can be complex. In Ohio, you may be approved for workers’ compensation benefits after your injury.

That’s crucial, because workers’ compensation provides medical treatment and income support to get you through this and onto better times.

But sometimes after you’re already receiving workers’ compensation benefits for your original injury, an additional condition stemming from your accident at work appears.

Your employer or the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) might refuse to help you with the newly diagnosed condition. They might say you can’t prove that the new health problem you’re facing is connected to the original injury.

You don’t have to accept this. You should have ALL your medical care resulting from your job injury taken care of by your workers’ compensation claim.

Talk to an experienced Ohio workers’ compensation lawyer from Horenstein, Nicholson & Blumenthal (HNB) for help getting fully covered. We serve Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and every city and town in Ohio.

HNB has secured over $500,000,000.00 in awards, benefits and settlements for our injury clients over 40 years.

Below, we discuss what happens when the Ohio BWC or your employer declines to pay for treatment or compensation for an additional condition beyond your already established and allowed conditions.

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    How An Additional Condition Comes Up After an Already Allowed BWC Claim

    Here’s an example of how someone could end up with an additional condition while receiving workers’ compensation in Ohio:

    • You hurt your back at work. Your doctor says you have a “lumbar sprain.” The BWC or your employer concludes this injury qualifies for benefits. You continue receiving medical treatment. A couple months later, the doctor sends you for an MRI scan. Then they find you have a herniated disc in your lower back. This is a new condition that you must get allowed into your workers’ compensation claim.

    Another term you may hear for additional conditions that emerge during your workers’ compensation claim is a “flow-through” condition.

    This is a condition not noticeable after your original injury, but it developed out of your original injury or due to treatment for your injury. This could include the effects of surgery, medication, falls and more.

    Or an additional condition could involve your mental health. Surviving but getting hurt in an accident at work can easily lead to anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and other mental health needs that you deserve help for.

    The BWC says you must show, “a direct or proximate causal relationship between the previously allowed injury and the claimant’s flow-through injury.”

    Making that connection is sometimes where the system tries to shortchange you, refusing to pay for more medical care or compensate you for lost time from work.

    Your workers’ compensation attorney can get this addressed. It costs nothing to share your situation with the Ohio workers’ compensation lawyers at HNB to see how you can get your workers’ compensation claim, and your recovery, back on track.

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    What To Do if You’re Denied an Additional Condition by the BWC or your Employer

    You must follow the proper procedures for getting an additional condition allowed in your workers’ compensation claim:

    • Your doctor can file a C-9 form with the BWC to request additional conditions be allowed.
    • You can File a C-86 form with the BWC to request additional conditions be allowed in your job injury claim.

    An Ohio workers’ compensation lawyer can make sure this is done right. But very often, the BWC or your employer try to reject your request for an additional condition.

    Then you may end up in a series of hearings with the Ohio Industrial Commission, which rules on appeals of workers’ compensation denials.

    WATCH OUT: Sometimes people don’t realize how vital it is to be prepared for an Industrial Commission hearing. Maybe it wasn’t the worker but their doctor who wanted to add a new condition to their workers’ compensation claim. The request was denied, and the injured worker gets called into a hearing unprepared.

    Without professional representation from someone who knows the Ohio workers’ compensation process inside and out, the worker can easily get denied again, losing out on medical treatment coverage, or payment for lost wages, a Permanent Partial Disability Award, or a great settlement.

    As soon as your doctor wants to add health conditions to your workers’ compensation claim, contact a work injury lawyer at HNB to represent you in this process .

    We’re here to make sure injured workers in Ohio like you get what’s fair—support for every consequence of your job injury— so you can move forward.

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