But if your injury is such that you get a 13% permanent partial disability or greater, it’s considered a serious injury. Although employers, generally speaking, probably 85% of the work-related injuries, they have immunity. And I will say this, you can also sue your employer. There’s an additional aspect that gets you additional money. If you’re injured at work and just say your employer, you’re on a manufacturing plant or in a coal mine and your employer has independent contractors coming in, doing different parts of the job, if those people are negligent in any way and they’re negligence resulted in your injury at work, you get workers’ compensation from your employer, but you also have the option of pursuing and seeking damages against the negligent party, which was the independent contractor’s workers who were negligence injured you. Generally speaking, you will know within 15 days of that WC-1 getting filed with the insurance company. There is a provision in the statute that allows the insurance company to file a notice that they need additional time to do more investigation and that will give them usually another 30 days, but those cases are rare. Now, that doesn’t start until they receive a form called a WC-1, and that form comes from the initial medical provider. In most cases, the claim will be denied or approved 15 days from the date the insurance company gets notified. There’s a state-funded West Virginia workers’ compensation-like insurance company to deal with employers who fail and who violate the law and are guilty, criminally at violating that law who don’t provide workers’ compensation for their injured workers, so the worker will get taken care of, but the employer will suffer the consequences. If that’s the case, you are definitely going to need to call me because there is a procedure, but hardly anybody knows about it and it’s a procedure. They’re all familiar and geared toward treating work-related injury. So, you’ll need to find a place and one of the places that does a lot of workers’ comp injuries for the general public is MedExpress or you can go to any emergency room like Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) emergency room. Employees find out who are injured on the job when they go to their family doctors, those doctors will immediately say, “Whoa, we don’t want any workers’ comp cases” they don’t want to fool with it. It’s not going to be any question about it, but some injuries you’re not immediately disabled and that you could maybe finish your shift or when your shift is over, you need to immediately go to a doctor. You’re injured at work, now some injuries, obviously you’re going to be transported out of there by an ambulance. When you’re injured, you need to seek medical treatment immediately or as fast and as soon as possible because that is what kicks in the start or the initiation of a workers’ compensation claim in West Virginia. I would give a ballpark figure within two weeks. I’ve seen some incredibly poor administration and some of these workers’ comp insurance companies, particularly out of state, but if you get ones that are used to dealing with West Virginia, you will get your temporary total disability benefits started. It could be anywhere from one week to six months. They are available to injured workers who cannot go back to their previous employment, their past relevant work. And then finally, if you’re unable to go back to your work, if your injury is very, very severe, there are vocational rehabilitation programs. It’s called temporary total disability benefits paid to you by the worker’s comp insurance company. In addition, if you’re off work and unable to work due to your work-related injury, you’ll have lost wages and you’ll get replacement wages. 100% of your medical treatment is paid for by the worker’s comp insurance company. It’s 100% paid for unlike if you were to use your health insurance and go to the hospital for something, you have copays to deal with, you have deductibles to deal with, but not with worker’s comp. When you suffer a work-related injury, you’re covered under the Workers’ Compensation Statutory Laws of West Virginia ¹ and that provides your medical treatment.
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