Personal Injury
A client calls my office two days before his permanency hearing. His back is flaring up again. He needs more injections. He thought he was done with treatment — but his body had other plans.
Now we have to postpone everything.
This happens more often than you might think. And it almost always comes down to one misunderstanding that I see over and over again in my workers' compensation practice: the belief that you can still get treatment while pursuing a final monetary award at the same time.
You can't. And if you don't understand that, it can cost you — not just money, but the medical care you need to actually recover.
This is the single most important thing I want injured workers in Maryland to understand. You cannot request additional medical treatment and a final award of compensation simultaneously. These are separate phases of your claim, and they happen in a specific order.
First, you complete your active treatment — every doctor's visit, every round of physical therapy, every injection or surgery your treating physician recommends. Only after that treatment is finished do we move to the next step: setting you up for an Independent Medical Examination (IME) and requesting a hearing on permanency.
When I say "finished," I mean your treating doctor has determined you've reached a point where no further treatment will meaningfully improve your condition, or you've made an informed decision that you don't wish to pursue additional recommended procedures.
Until that point, the focus should be entirely on getting better.
I've had cases where a client asks the treating doctor to discharge him early. He's tired of going to appointments. He wants to know how long until he gets his award proceeds. He wants this chapter to be over — and I understand that completely.
So we begin preparing for a hearing. We gather medical records, schedule the IME, and set a date before the Maryland Workers' Compensation Commission.
Then, a few days before that hearing, the phone rings. The client's back is flaring up. He needs to go back to treatment.
At that point, we have no choice but to postpone the hearing. We cannot ask the Commission for a final award of compensation while the client still needs active medical care. The entire timeline resets.
And here's the part that concerns me most: if we had already received a final award and the client returns to treatment immediately afterward, the insurance company can request that the award be rescinded as premature. That's a real risk — and it's entirely avoidable.
There's another side to this that every injured worker should be aware of. Insurance companies have their own timeline in mind, and it rarely aligns with what your body actually needs.
One of the most common tactics I see is the insurer scheduling you for an IME with their chosen doctor. That doctor examines you once — often briefly — and places you at maximum medical improvement, or MMI. Once that happens, the insurer uses it as grounds to deny any further treatment.
But here's what you need to know: that IME doctor's opinion is not the final word. If your treating physician — the doctor who has been working with you throughout your recovery — still recommends additional treatment, we can take the matter to a hearing and let the Commission decide.
I've seen this play out many times. The insurance company's doctor says you're done. Your treating doctor says you need three more months of physical therapy, or another set of injections. The Commission looks at both opinions and makes a ruling. More often than not, when the treating doctor's recommendations are well-documented and reasonable, we get a favorable result.
If your treatment has been denied after an insurance company IME, don't assume that's the final word. It may be worth having an experienced workers' compensation attorney review your situation and fight for the care you still need.
When clients ask me what their workers' comp claim is worth, they're almost always thinking about the monetary award at the end. And yes, that matters. But I always tell them the same thing: the real value of your claim is that the insurance company is required to pay for all of your causally related medical treatment.
Every doctor's visit. Every MRI. Every round of physical therapy. Every injection. Every surgery, if it comes to that.
That is worth far more than most people realize — especially when you consider what those treatments would cost out of pocket.
When you rush through treatment just to get to the monetary award faster, you're potentially leaving medical care on the table. Care that could reduce your pain, improve your mobility, and give you a better quality of life going forward.
I've seen clients initially decline a recommended procedure — injections or surgery, for example — because they wanted to move straight to the permanency phase. Then, weeks or months later, the pain comes back and they change their mind. If we've already obtained a final award, getting back into treatment becomes significantly more complicated.
Take your time. Use the treatment that's available to you. That's what the system is designed for.
My advice to anyone with an open workers' compensation claim in Maryland is simple: before you push to settle or move toward a final award, have a thorough conversation with both your treating doctor and your attorney.
Ask your doctor whether they've exhausted every reasonable treatment option. Ask whether there are additional procedures that might help. Make sure you're not closing the door on care that could make a real difference in your recovery.
Then talk to your attorney about where your claim stands and what the next steps look like. A good attorney will walk you through the timing, explain the process, and make sure you're not moving forward prematurely.
The monetary award will come. But it comes at the end — after the work of healing is done.
If you have questions about your workers' compensation claim or you're unsure whether it's the right time to pursue a settlement or permanency hearing, I'm happy to talk it through with you. Every case is different, and the details matter. Reach out to me at SG Legal Group and we can look at your situation together.
Ioana David, Esq.
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