Some nurse case managers may not be acting in your best interests.
The short answer is, “be careful.”
In many workers’ compensation claims, an insurance adjuster hires someone called a nurse case manager, or NCM. The workers’ compensation insurance adjusters claim that the purpose of the NCM is to help coordinate doctor appointments or work as a go-between with the adjuster and the injured worker.
Simply put, it’s important to remember where the NCM’s paycheck comes from: the insurance company.
Often times, however, the NCM will attempt to direct you to doctors that might not be in your best interest for treatment purposes, or direct you to doctors that are well-known to release patients back to work before they’re ready. Similarly, the NCM will attempt to influence your doctors into signing reports that may be detrimental to your workers’ compensation claim, or worse: your health.
Even the Supreme Court of Nebraska has stated that NCMs hired by the insurance companies are not considered a benefit to the injured employee.
Simply put, it’s important to remember where the NCM’s paycheck comes from: the insurance company. Consequently, a good “result” for a NCM (released back to work with no additional medical treatment) might not be a good “result” for you. So be careful. Just because your NCM claims that he or she is acting in your best interest, that may not actually be true.
![](http://tembow-analytics.elasticbeanstalk.com/piwik.php?idsite=1&rec=1&cvar={"1":["pub_id","730"],"2":["pub_blog_id","4"],"3":["post_id","612"],"4":["post_co_id","4"],"5":["social_auths","none"]})
Here are five critical things to keep in mind if you ever find yourself injured while at work.
Today we’re featuring another guest post by our colleague Tom Domer of Wisconsin. Here Tom shares the legal tests that establish whether damages for mental injury will be awarded. For mental injuries following a physical injury, the standard is “Is the mental disability… related to the work injury?” For cases that don’t involve a physical injury, some states require that the stress that triggered the mental injury be extraordinary “beyond those stresses than the day to day emotional strain and tension which all employees must experience.” While these criteria can be difficult to meet, mental injuries are real and can be as debilitating as physical ones.
