Whether your job primarily involves manual labor, working behind a desk, or a combination of the two, sustaining any kind of injury to your neck can keep you from effectively doing that work for weeks or months at a time. In the worst-case scenario, serious trauma to the cervical section of your spinal cord may even cause permanent and irreversible paralysis, rendering you unable to hold any kind of job for the rest of your life.
In both these scenarios, workers’ compensation can provide vital benefits that will help you pay for medical treatment and make up for a significant portion of your lost work income. As any tenacious workplace injury attorney could tell you, your employer and their insurance company will not just give you benefits out of kindness, so you will need to proactively demand the compensation you deserve with help from a Downey workplace neck injury lawyer.
Workers’ compensation is designed to help injured workers deal with short-term expenses after sustaining an injury or contracting an illness on the job that prevents them from performing some or all their usual job duties. With that in mind, any work-related trauma to the neck that requires professional medical care of some kind and interferes with an employee’s ability to work could be the basis for a workers’ comp claim, including chronic or degenerative conditions that develop over several years due to repetition motion or stress.
It is worth reiterating that it is possible to seek workers’ comp benefits both over neck injuries that will heal completely with time and proper treatment and injuries that will never fully heal and result in some form of physical disability. In addition to reasonably necessary medical treatment, a Downey workplace neck injury attorney could help seek benefits for permanent loss of work income and work capacity in the latter situation, including job retraining and placement services if needed.
If a workplace accident leads to a worker sustaining a blow to the head, neck, or skull, which has even the slightest potential of causing damage to the spinal cord, that worker’s top priority afterward should be seeking emergency medical attention. After doing that, or if emergency treatment is not required, their first priority should be notifying their employer in writing about how and where they were injured, something that a workplace neck injury lawyer in Downey could assist with if needed.
With the exception of emergency treatment, anyone seeking medical care for any type of work-related injury must receive care from a physician or medical group their employer has improved. It is possible to predesignate a personal physical or medical group to receive treatment from as an alternative to an employer’s selected provider(s), but this must be done before a workplace injury occurs.
Getting hurt on the job can interfere a great deal with both your personal and professional life, and neck injuries tend to be particularly harmful in both regards. Fortunately, you should be able to seek benefits through your employer’s workers’ compensation insurance policy that will help lessen the financial blow of this unfortunate incident.
An expert Downey workplace neck injury lawyer could provide irreplaceable assistance through the workers’ comp claims process, improving your chances of securing a favorable result. Call today to learn more during a consultation meeting.
