After each doctor visit following a workplace injury, you can expect one of these outcomes:
- The doctor will give you the go-ahead to return to work until your next medical appointment, with no restrictions.
- The doctor will allow you to return to work, but with restrictions, such as forbidding you to stand or walk more than 15 minutes at a time or carry no more than 10 pounds. These restrictions may or may not impact your ability to perform your job.
- The doctor will recommend that you stop working, at least until your next medical appointment.
In the case of the last option, you will be designated as having a temporary disability. In the event you are given work restrictions that impact your ability to perform your job you will likely also be designated as temporarily disabled. In either of these cases you will fit into one of the following categories, each of which affords payment to your of certain monetary benefits:
- TTD: Temporary Total Disability (perhaps for a broken bone or an injury or condition requiring surgery)
- TPD: Temporary Partial Disability (if, perhaps, you can work with a reduced or lightened work load, either full time or part time, but you are not earning as much income as before your injury). If you have been discharged by a physician at "Maximum Medical Improvement," you will be given a rating to the injured body part and possibly be given work restrictions that become permanent. Upon your discharge from medical care, you may be characterized as falling into one of the following categories, each of which also affords payment to you for certain monetary benefits.
- PPD: Permanent Partial Disability (if, perhaps, you have permanently lost partial use of your whole body or part of your body, or have suffered an amputation, hearing loss or vision loss)
- PTD: Permanent Total Disability (if, perhaps, you are unable to work again at all because of a specific, permanent and total loss of use of parts of your body)
Nuances that determine which the disability classification that you fall under can make thousands of dollars of difference in workers' compensation benefits that you receive. Other key aspects of your case such as those listed below can also dramatically affect the level of benefits that you receive, including the following:
- Average weekly wage / compensation rate calculations
- Impairment rating
- Eligibility of your ailment or injury to be classified as a qualifying occupational disease or injury by accident
Depending on your disability classification and other calculation factors, you will receive weekly benefit payments and/or a lump sum. When you choose a workers' compensation lawyer, you should ask how that attorney's fees will be paid when you receive your benefits. Some attorneys request and receive orders from the Industrial Commission to get every fourth check of their clients' weekly benefit payments, even when those weekly benefit payments were already ongoing or would have been started without any effort on the attorney's part.
However, at Brown, Moore & Associates, PLLC, we understand how essential these weekly payments are to our clients, so we take our fees only out of any post hearing award by the Industrial Commission, or any final settlement — but not out of weekly benefit payments on claims for which compensability is accepted, unless our clients are simultaneously eligible for Social Security Disability. This difference is significant to many of our clients.
When we advise our clients on whether to accept offers of lump sum payments versus weekly payments, or whether or not to settle a claim versus leaving it open for benefits, we work hard to educate the clients, so that they can make informed decisions. Our goal in workers' compensation representation always comes down to helping ensure that our clients receive maximum available benefits. Oftentimes this means that we represent our clients in hearings before the Industrial Commission.
Contact a North Carolina Temporary Disability Attorney
Talk to one of our workers' compensation lawyers and learn how we can help you assert your rights to all the disability benefits that you are entitled to through workers' compensation. Contact Brown, Moore & Associates, PLLC, to schedule a free initial consultation with a Charlotte disability benefits attorney. Call toll-free 866-959-2586, or contact us online.
