Surviving WorkCover

If you suffer a permanent work injury, which has long-term effects, it can have a major effect on your quality of life. Dealing with your injury and its effects can be extremely stressful. Negotiating your way around a very complex WorkCover system, dealing with your employer, the WorkCover agent, rehabilitation agents, doctors and lawyers etc can be mind boggling! Below are a few hints that can help you survive WorkCover!

Maximise your recovery

Your highest priority should be to maximize the extent of your physical and psychological recovery. High quality medical treatment is essential to maximize recovery. WorkCover must pay for all reasonable treatment costs. The most critical issue is to make sure that you are getting the best quality medical treatment possible. (For more information on obtaining the best medical treatment click here)

Understand your WorkCover entitlements

You will have to make many important decisions about your future. In order to make the right decisions it will be critical to understand as much as you possibly can about the structure of WorkCover benefits, how they interact with your other employment entitlements and your superannuation.

WorkCover is a very complex system! The Act of Parliament which governs WorkCover alone is several hundred pages long and quite complicated. Trying to understand just what WorkCover does and does not provide is really important. There are many resources available to help you with this task. (For more information on resources click here).

Deal well with WorkCover

When you deal with WorkCover, your claims manager etc this can have a significant effect on your claim and on your stress levels. Following a few simple guidelines can make dealing with WorkCover much easier. Keeping good records and going out of your way to develop a good relationship (where possible!) with your claims manager and WorkCover staff can make a difference. (For tips on dealing with WorkCover click here)

Assess your future work capacity

One of the most difficult areas which you will experience with WorkCover is the question assessing your future work capacity and dealing with issues of rehabilitation and potential return to work.

In theory, the WorkCover system is strongly committed to rehabilitating claimants and providing assistance to enable a return to work. Rehabilitation, however, means different things to different parties. Some employers are genuinely committed to rehabilitation and a proper return to work; many others however, have no genuine interest in returning an injured worker to meaningful work and so provide only minimal assistance to keep WorkCover happy. These employers are easy to identify, they use phrases like "we don't have light duties" or "don't come back without a full clearance certificate". Others make only meaningless or demeaning work available. Sadly, in these cases, a return to work can be like a 'guerilla warfare' which is, ultimately, aimed at squeezing the injured person out of the workplace. Chances are you have seen how your employer has treated other people who have been injured at work. (For more information about return to work click here).

Obtain legal advice sooner rather than later

When you suffer a permanent work injury, it is likely to have many financial and other effects. It is important that you obtain legal advice so that you can be prepared for some of the issues that may emerge as your condition progresses. If you obtain legal advice early, you will be well prepared to deal with many of the challenges that can emerge in the course of your claim. At Workforce Legal we offer an obligation free consultation at no cost, so that you can be well informed about the likely progress of your claim and some of the difficulties that can emerge. (For more information about obtaining legal advice click here).

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