How long will my claim take to resolve?
Most workers' comp cases are resolved relatively quickly, in the sense that when you get injured on the job, the claim immediately starts getting processed. So for instance, if you've ever been injured in a car wreck and had a car wreck claim, what happens is you don't even start dealing with insurance, you don't even start dealing with processing that claim until the very end, until you've finished your doctor's treatment and your claim is over.
That's not the way it works on a workers' compensation claim. On a workers' compensation claim, our office immediately starts auditing your payroll records, starts auditing your healthcare records, making sure that the insurance company is kept up to date on things.
We will start keeping a diary of things, so that that we can let doctors know that at the end of your claim whenever you get an impairment rating, the doctor has a complete picture of your medical condition and give you an appropriate rating so that that way you're taken care of. And so, in terms of the amount of time it takes, usually by the time you're healed or by the time you're well from your injury, 90 days after that is the deadline for wrapping up a workers' comp case. And so your case is going to take as long as it takes you to get well plus about 90 days.