When a person is hurt at work, there is an important first step that the worker should immediately take to comply with\u00a0 Kansas law.\u00a0 This is the notice requirement, which provides that you must give your employer notice of the injury.\u00a0 This notice should be given to a supervisor.\u00a0 It can be a verbal notice.\u00a0 Whatever the nature of the injury, it should be\u00a0reported.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are the required notice timelines for injuries after May 15, 2011:\u00a0 (1)\u00a0 30 calendar days from the date of accident or the date of injury by repetitive trauma; (2)\u00a0 if the employee is working for the employer against whom benefits are being sought and such employee seeks medical treatment for any injury by accident or repetitive trauma, 20 calendar days from the date that the medical treatment is sought; and (3) if the employee no longer works for the employer against whom benefits are being sought, 20 calendar days after the employee’s actual last day of work for the employer.<\/p>\n
Many workers are reluctant to notify their employer of a work injury.\u00a0 The worker may be afraid of some sort of adverse action by the employer.\u00a0 The worker may also believe that the injury is so minor that nothing should be said.\u00a0 Finally, some employees believe they should \u201ctough it out\u201d and not report work\u00a0injuries.<\/p>\n
It is against the law for an employer to retaliate against a worker who sustains a work injury and then reports it.\u00a0 Second, even if the injury seems minor at the outset, it should still be reported.\u00a0 Often injuries, especially so-called \u201csoft tissue\u201d injuries, do not immediately manifest themselves as being a serious condition.\u00a0 Sometimes, the required 10 days to give notice will have come and gone before the injured worker decides to seek medical treatment.\u00a0\u00a0 Therefore, there is one rule that should govern:\u00a0 REPORT ANY INJURY NO MATTER HOW\u00a0SLIGHT.<\/p>\n
Finally, a brief comment about medical treatment.\u00a0 It is the responsibility of the employer to provide medical treatment to an injured worker.\u00a0 Thus, the employer gets to select the physician.\u00a0 On the other hand, if the worker gives the required notice, and then the employer does nothing, the worker can select his or her own physician to provide treatment.\u00a0 The bills become the responsibility of the employer.\u00a0 This, in and of itself, is a good reason to remember to give immediate notice of any injury to the employer.\u00a0 Even if it is minor, give the notice, and get to a doctor to have the injury checked out by a\u00a0professional.<\/p>\n
PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING RECENT CHANGES TO THE NOTICE PROVISIONS:<\/strong><\/p>\n The notice rules discussed above apply to injuries occurring on or after May 15, 2011 and until April 24, 2013.\u00a0 Prior to May 15, 2011, the law provided different notice requirement.\u00a0 In 2011, the workers compensation law was revised to include the requirements shown above .\u00a0 On April 25, 2013, another revision to the law went into effect for injuries occurring on or after that date.\u00a0 The Legislature again amended the notice provisions of the Workers Compensation Act during the 2013 session.\u00a0 The new notice provisions make it necessary to give notice within 10 days of the injury if the employee is no longer employed by the respondent employer and 20 days of the injury if still employed by the respondent employer or within 20 days of first seeing an unauthorized physician for the injury.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u00a0can contact Paul\u2019s office at 785.273.1353 or complete the\u00a0contact us<\/a> form or visit his\u00a0website<\/a> for more legal\u00a0information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When a person is hurt at work, there is an important first step that the worker should immediately take to comply with\u00a0 Kansas law.\u00a0 This is the notice requirement, which provides that you must give your employer notice of the injury.\u00a0 This notice should be given to a supervisor.\u00a0 It can be a verbal notice.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work-comp"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}