Workers Comp. They are two of the most feared words within the law enforcement community! Workers Comp also known as Workers Compensation (WC) is a body of laws and rules governing workplace injuries, workers, and employers.
What is WC
If an employee is injured at work, employers are financially responsible for the employee’s treatment-related expenses. On the employer side, the laws and rules are intended to protect employers from employees who make fraudulent claims of workplace injuries.
On the employee side, the laws and rules are intended to help injured employees recover and return to work when possible.
Bureaucracy
Because of this duality of purpose inherent within the framework of the rules and laws, navigating the process can be a very stressful and daunting endeavor for employees. From the First Report of Injury form, which must be completed within 60 days of the injury, to the M-1 form which must be completed by the providers, there is a labyrinth of legalese that must be digested and followed.
One such form is the Release of Information which employees are required to sign allowing their providers to send medical records to the Workers Compensation insurer. Those records are necessary to substantiate the employee’s injury claim and subsequent treatment.
For many years Maine (no one really knows how long) has required an employee to be represented by an attorney when signing the Release of Information form! Having a lawyer present, as one can imagine, added a considerable delay to the process of obtaining compensation while one was out of work! Conversely, there is never any delay to the bills coming to one’s home! The bills pile up while draconian bureaucratic nonsense frustrates and causes untold amounts of stress on the injured employee.
A Barrier to Treatment
I fought that policy for years noting that competent adults could sign a Release of Information form for their primary care physicians, their optometrists, their psychologist, their psychiatrist, and any other provider known to mankind without having to do it with a lawyer present! In my practice I only work with police officers, and most officers found it absurd and insulting to think they weren’t competent enough to understand what signing a Release of Information (ROI) form meant.
Forcing an employee to be represented by legal counsel to sign the ROI added another unnecessary layer of stress to an already stressful situation.
Common Sense Prevailed
Fortunately, the Workers Compensation Board listened to my protests and earlier this year they invited me to be part of their efforts to improve the WC system. I explained the unnecessary requirement to have a lawyer present when an employee signs the ROI was humiliating, time consuming, and a barrier to treatment. The Board listened and agreed with me.
The updated rules no longer stipulate the requirement for an employee to be represented by counsel when signing the ROI. The updated ROI form is published and in use! One barrier to treatment was removed!
The stigma associated with LEOs seeking treatment remains a formidable barrier but changing the ROI rule is a significant victory towards normalizing it.
Stay safe and healthy, Mark Holbrook, Ph.D., PE, LCPC, LLC