Worker's Compensation
It's your health and disability insurance benefits for on-the-job injuries. In Kansas, almost all employers are required by law to provide workers' compensation benefits for their employees. These benefits don’t cost you – the employee – a penny, and the medical benefits for injuries on the job are potentially unlimited. This is so, whether you’ve been on the job a lifetime or for only an hour.
Let’s say you’re working on a tall building. You fall 40 feet, fracture a cervical vertebra and sever your spinal cord. The employer and its insurance company can be made to pick up the bill for your medical care for the rest of your life, including all necessary surgery, prescriptions, special rehabilitation aids, even nursing home care.Workers’ compensation insurance also provides limited disability benefits, if you can’t work. These benefits are called temporary total, permanent partial and, in some cases, permanent total weekly benefits.
You are entitled to temporary total disability benefits, if you are temporarily unable to do any work your employer has available and a doctor agrees. You also may be entitled to permanent partial disability benefits, if a permanent impairment results from your injury. Permanent impairments are currently determined in Kansas by a physician using the AMA Guides 4th edition. The maximum length of time these benefits are currently payable in Kansas is 415 weeks. In unusual cases, an illness may be compensable under workers’ compensation law.
But, what if your employer doesn’t do what the law says it must do and fails to provide workers’ compensation insurance for you? There is still help. It’s called the state workers’ compensation fund and this fund takes the place of workers’ compensation insurance and provides the same benefits.
Call us today for a confidential appointment and help with your workers' compensation claim at 785.272.4108.
