Open medicals is an option that someone would pursue in a worker’s compensation case if they have been injured permanently as a result of their injury that occurred on the job.
What I mean by that is something that it’s an injury that’s going to linger forever into the future. It’s not something like a broken leg or something that will heal and then ultimately you will be fine and you can go on with your life. It’s more along the lines of maybe you’ve got a degenerative back problem that you’re going to be living with for the rest of your life that is essentially a permanent impairment.
When that sort of thing happens to you and it’s something that they have to account for as it relates to your worker’s compensation case, they can opt for something called open medicals. What that means is that when they close your worker’s compensation case and you get your final payment for whatever your injury is, they can actually “leave your medicals open” and that means that from that point forward, you will always be able to come back to the worker’s comp doctors for treatment for the injury that brought that worker’s compensation case to the forefront.
This is an important aspect of a worker’s compensation case that the typical layman is not familiar with and it’s something that only an attorney is going to be able to pursue for you and ultimately get.
A Medicare set aside is something that has come about fairly recently as Medicare has become – well the federal government and Medicare generally has become more interested in trying to get the money that they spend on people’s medical care back.
Medicare set aside means that as it relates to your injury, your lawyer and your doctor have to anticipate what your future medical costs are going to be as far as the treatment is concerned for the injury that you sustain in your worker’s compensation case.
So you have to anticipate that as far as the entirety of that person’s lifetime. Set aside, i.e. Medicare set aside, that amount of money as part of your worker’s compensation case in some sort of trust or escrow account to be used as is necessary for ongoing treatment.
This is a secondary aspect of worker’s compensation case and it’s also something that a lawyer that’s familiar with that law is going to be able to work better simply because he’s familiar with it and he has been through the process whereas your typical layman or somebody who’s going unrepresented isn’t going to know about these things.
The question that you’re naturally wondering at this point is, “Well, why is this important to me?” Well, the reason why it’s important to you is if you don’t have a lawyer to help you with these, that knows about these particular issues, chances are you’re not going to be asking for them and you’re not going to get them. That’s a real problem because once you close your worker’s compensation case, you’re not going to be able to go back and get a second bite at the apple.
So I would strongly encourage you, if you’ve got a worker’s compensation case that is significant and certainly has resulted in a permanent injury, you need to go and obtain representation because there are rights that you’re probably not aware of that you need to protect.
If you have an ongoing worker’s compensation case or you have any general questions, contact the Hartman Law Firm at (843) 300-7600 today.
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