In the last few years, there have been a number of cases from the Commonwealth Court seeking to define the various provisions of Section 306(a.2) of the Workers’ Compensation Act, dealing with impairment rating evaluations. IREs are used to determine the percentage of “permanent impairment” at the end of an injured worker’s receipt of 104 weeks of total disability benefits. This proposed evaluation had the goal of converting the status of a claimant’s benefits from total to partial in nature, without altering the amount of compensation owed, in the event an injured worker’s “whole person impairment” was less than 50 percent according to the American Medical Association’s “Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairments.”
While the act and the practice of workers’ compensation is still not inextricably dependent upon the AMA guides as was widely anticipated following the passage of Act 57, the IRE still has substantial significance. The initial lack of appellate guidance regarding the use of IREs was the main reason the exams took a good deal of time to affect the practice significantly. The flurry of cases defining the IRE began with Gardner v. W.C.A.B. (Genesis Health Ventures) , decided by the Commonwealth Court in 2003 and modified by the Supreme Court almost two years later, to hold that an employer that fails to timely avail itself of the automatic reduction provided for in Section 306(a.2) of the Workers’ Compensation Act must seek a change in disability benefit status from total to partial through a “traditional administrative process.” The most recent case in the line of IRE cases, Diehl v. W.C.A.B. (IA Construction and Liberty Mutual Insurance) , which is actually under reconsideration by the Commonwealth Court, sought to define what this “traditional process” is.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
