Tag Archives: Injured Workers

Medical Care

Physical Medicine Best Practices Project

The Physical Medicine Best Practices Project undertaken by the WA Department of Labor and Industries seeks to bring increased standardization of care and care reporting by physical and occupational therapists. The pilot project is a collaboration with community experts to implement best practices that ensure workers receive:

  • Effective physical and occupational therapy services.
  • Clinically meaningful improvement in function.
  • Focusing on return to work.

Learn more about the Physical Medicine Best Practices Project, including the stakeholders involved in the project, and watch the video, below, for an overview.

Understand How Your Providers Report to DLI

Under the Physical Medicine Best Practices Project, your physical or occupational therapist will report to your attending physician and your claims manager on a regular basis. Your therapist will use the Physical Medicine Progress Report form to document your treatment, progress, and functional ability levels. If you have an assigned vocational counselor, this report form may be used to clarify your physical abilities for purposes of documenting your ability to work. The form is currently used by your therapist on a voluntary basis, but it will be phased in and will become mandatory soon.

In addition to standardizing care and reporting, this project and, by extension, the reporting form, encourages your physical or occupational therapist to engage with you, the patient, and your doctor. Your therapist’s suggestions for evaluation by additional types of providers or for additional treatment services can be noted and shared using this form.

Best Practices Quick Reference Card

Although meant for medical providers, the Department’s Best Practices Quick Reference Card provides an injured worker with clear information about the intent of the Physical Medicine Best Practices Project. It shows the focus on patient engagement and increased communication, and outcome documentation and tracking.

Reviewing the quick reference card will give you a clear understanding of the goals and expectations for your progress in physical therapy.

Wage and Rates

Wage Theft Another Assault on Workers’ Compensation

Today’s post was shared by Gelman on Workplace Injuries and comes from www.nytimes.com

As corporate America devises new methods to reduce wages it also assaults the injured workers’ benefit safety net, including workers’ compensation insurance. That results in rate benefits going down and premium bases becoming inadequate to pay ongoing claims. Today’s post is shared from nytimes.com and is authored by its Editorial Board.

When labor advocates and law enforcement officials talk about wage theft, they are usually referring to situations in which low-wage service-sector employees are forced to work off the clock, paid subminimum wages, cheated out of overtime pay or denied their tips. It is a huge and underpoliced problem. It is also, it turns out, not confined to low-wage workers.

In the days ahead, a settlement is expected in the antitrust lawsuit pitting 64,613 software engineers against Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe. The engineers say they lost up to $3 billion in wages from 2005-9, when the companies colluded in a scheme not to solicit one another’s employees. The collusion, according to the engineers, kept their pay lower than it would have been had the companies actually competed for talent.

The suit, brought after the Justice Department investigated the anti-recruiting scheme in 2010, has many riveting aspects, including emails and other documents that tarnish the reputation of Silicon Valley as competitive and of technology executives as a new breed of “don’t-be-evil” bosses, to cite Google’s informal motto.

The…

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