Tribunal's panel rejects doctor's apportionment of injuries to nonindustrial causes
The medical and vocational evidence in a recent case amounted to substantial evidence supporting that a worker was permanently and totally disabled due to his inability to benefit from vocational rehabilitation, a panel of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board said.
The County of Los Angeles employed the applicant in the case of Garrison vs. County of Los Angeles, permissibly self-insured; administered by Sedgwick Claims Management Services as a firefighter. He made two workers’ compensation claims.
In the first, the applicant claimed injuries to his skin, psyche, knees, lower back, colon, and hernia and injuries in the form of hearing loss, anal leakage, and anaemia for the period from Sept. 20, 1999 to Oct. 18, 2017. In the second, he claimed injuries to his right knee and lower back on Oct. 17, 2017.
Read more: California worker seeks compensation for injury allegedly arising from repetitive job duties
Independent medical evaluators (IMEs) evaluated the applicant’s workplace injury claims as required by a dispute resolution agreement between his union and the defendant employer.
The IME for internal medicine apportioned the applicant’s injuries in this way: 80 percent of the impairment was related to job stressors, while 20 percent was due to nonindustrial causes since he had underlying immunologic abnormalities in the form of rheumatoid arthritis.
Last December, the workers’...
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