A Day in the Life: Riverside Electrician Can't Get Medical Care Three Years After His Injury on Job--Asks California Insurance C

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Denial of Needed Care Leaving Family Destitute--Unfortunately is Typical

By Frank D. Russo

Greg Parr was injured over three years ago while working as an electrician. He fell and injured his left arm and shoulder. After more than three years, he still can’t get authorization for needed care.

Outside the Workers Compensation Appeals Board in downtown Riverside, he told his story of how an insurance company has been able to get away with leaving him and his family I the lurch by overruling medical care recommended by his doctor that he needs to get back to work. He called for Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and Division of Workers Compensation Director Carrie Nevans to investigate insurance company abuse of "medical care review."

If this was just a single case, it would be a personal tragedy. Unfortunately it is all too common. As an attorney who represented injured workers for over a quarter of a century, I have seen this before, but what is accepted as commonplace today is far worse than it has been in the past.

This is how Parr described his injury: “I was walking on a pipe when I felt my feet slip out from under me. I fell down head first, and landed on my shoulder. The pain was unbearable. I went to work the next day and could barely move my left arm. I had pain shooting up and down my arm and shoulder. I found out later that I had a split elbow bone. The workers compensation insurer has delayed and denied treatment for my elbow since the claim was filed for my ‘left arm,’ but didn’t use the word ‘ulna.’”

What you have to understand is that workers' compensation was supposed to be a "no fault" system. When it was enacted in California in 1913 as one of the great reforms of Governor Hiram Johnson, it was supposed to provide speedy and "expeditious" medical care for those injured on the job along with adequate payments to substitute for temporary periods of disability and permanent injuries. Injured workers gave up their rights which they had at the time to sue employers for injuries on the job, and this is the bargain they were supposed to get. This tradeoff is in the California Constitution.