Like at the beginning of any kind of worker compensation case, if you get hurt on the job, you are going to be entitled to certain things under the statute automatically, or you should be automatically entitled to certain things in the statute. One would be medical treatment right away. So if you get hurt, you need to report it to your employer immediately. That's key because if you don't, there can be a certain amount of time that goes by, you can be hurt by the fact that you didn't report it in time. So you need to report it to your employer right away. That employer should, at that point, send you for a medical evaluation. That does not always happen. If that doesn't happen that's a time where you need to seek representation to try to make sure that that's getting taken care of.
If the employer does send you for medical treatment, you go, you get that medical treatment. That treatment can vary wildly, depending upon what the injury is, and where you are sent. The employer does have the right to control that medical treatment, but if they don't send you automatically, or they deny you medical treatment, you do have the opportunity to go then on your own, seek your treatment, and we can maybe get it reimbursed at a later date when we would get involved. So you got medical treatment benefits. So, you are either, if you go to see the doctor, and the doctor takes you and puts you on a medical restriction, says, you've got a lifting restriction or you can only use one arm, or depending on what your injury is, that there would be a physical restriction. If your employer cannot accommodate that restriction. In other words, they don't have any work that would allow you to work one-handed, per se. Then at that point, you'd be entitled to stay home and draw your workers' compensation benefit check, which is what's called temporary and total disability.
So you're entitled to temporary total disability if your employer can't accommodate your restriction, or if you have a serious enough injury where the doctor was to take you off work altogether. So, if you've had a surgical procedure and the doctor says, "Hey, look, you can not go back to work at all," you're entitled to what's called temporary total disability after a period of waiting. So you've got the medical treatment. Then you've got benefits for payment, either light-duty benefits or temporary total disability benefits. Then at some point in time, you're going to be done with your treatment, or at least the doctors that you're being sent to. We're going to say, you're done with your medical treatment.
You're going to be placed at what's called maximum medical improvement. When you reach maximum medical improvement, you're probably going to be left with some ongoing lingering effects from your injury. That's where we would be working to get you what's called permanent partial disability or permanent total disability, depending on the severity of what you've got ongoing. Permanent partial disability is just that. It's permanent, but it's partial. You can still work. You can still function, but you have limitations stuff, that's different from what you could do before you got hurt. So let's say it's a shoulder injury, for instance. You may have limitations in your ability to reach overhead, to work overhead, to reach behind you, to do any kind of lifting in your out front or overhead. Those are things that then translate into what's called permanent partial disability under the workers' compensation statute.
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