Posted on January 23, 2019
If you have a work injury, you may have come across the phrase “whole person impairment” and also “seriously injured worker”. The terms and concepts can be confusing and so it is important to inform yourself as much as possible about your rights, especially if your injury has prevented you from returning to your job.
In South Australia, unless you are assessed or determined to be seriously injured, you will have limited coverage of workers compensation. A worker who is seriously injured has a whole person impairment of 30% or more. Exactly what can be counted to get to 30% can be difficult to identify and understand and can cause problems for workers trying to navigate the system.
A whole person impairment is identified after a worker sees a doctor who is specially accredited and examines the worker’s impairments from their work injury. Sometimes a worker has more than one impairment from a work injury. Often a worker will have more than one work injury and therefore multiple impairments. Just how multiple impairments are evaluated can be crucial to your future.
It is our experience that Return to Work SA and its agents (Employers Mutual Ltd and Gallagher Bassett) are not very flexible with respect to whole person impairment assessments. The process can be daunting, slow and frustrating. It relies on medical evidence being applied to the law.
For some people, the outcome of their whole person impairment assessment is crucial to their future because they have ongoing medical expenses, or they cannot get back to work. Being able to properly identify exactly what the impairments are that result from your work injury and should therefore be included takes skill, understanding and expertise. Ensuring that your assessment process is comprehensive and is carried out properly can be the difference between being cut off (falling beneath the 30% threshold) and access to lifetime care (medical expenses) and income support.
One of the issues that many workers don’t know about is that you can only have one assessment for your work injury. If you have your assessment and (for example) then have further surgery, the impact of that surgery will not count toward your whole person impairment assessment. This can be devastating because the guidelines place significant emphasis on surgery in rating impairments. Or, you may have a whole person impairment assessment without understanding that symptoms and problems you suffer from are work related and should be counted towards the total assessment.
It has taken us years of dedicated work in this area of the law to be able to say with confidence that we know the guidelines that are applied by the doctors and the law which will determine whether a worker reaches or exceeds the 30% mark. Our ability to guide and assist injured workers on these topics results from a dedicated practise in the field.
We know the correct questions to ask you to assist you in determining what you should be asking to be included in the whole person impairment assessment.
To discuss this process and how you can get the best out of it, you can contact one of our lawyers who can explain what is involved and how you can best navigate this complex and difficult part of your claim.