Getting hurt on the job is a scary thing. We know this. Probably the only thing that is worse than losing your job is getting hurt on the job and not knowing:

  • Whether you will be able to go back to work and if you can’t go back to work…
  • How are you going to feed your family?
  • How are you going to pay your bills?
  • How are you going to deal with the insurance company?
  • How are you going to live the rest of your life?

And if it’s a serious injury these are serious questions that deserve serious answers truthful answers… answers that you might not want to hear. But I have found over the years that the blunt “right between the eyes truth” is the best medicine that you can have, at least knowing what you can expect in the future from somebody who has got nothing at stake, a law firm that is willing to say just exactly how it is, no holds barred. That somebody is m Workers Compensation Lawyer Larry Levin. That firm is Shor Levin.

Now in Worker’s Compensation and we have been doing this for almost 40 years. In fact I was doing it before I actually became a lawyer as an adjuster for an insurance company. Worker’s compensation is supposed to be without fault. It’s supposed to be a system that the worker can go through on his own. It’s supposed to be a simple system, and over the last 40 years it’s actually evolved into almost a nightmare for somebody who is hurt on the job. You really can’t choose what doctor you want to see if the insurance company or your employer has followed the letter of the law and limited your choices in that respect the first 90 days. Now most of the time they don’t, but you will never know that, and no one will ever tell you that except a lawyer who is familiar with the Worker’s Compensation system.

So here you go to an absolute stranger somebody who you have no familiarity with no confidence in just because you got hurt on the job and that relationship that special relationship that you had between doctor and patient. Perhaps you have had a family doctor for 10, 15, or 20 years or more. He can’t really do anything for you if you are within the system, if you are within the Worker’s Compensation system. So that can be a very scary situation right there but to make matters worse you are not seeing the best doctors. You are seeing the doctors that are captivated by the insurance company — that are bought and paid for by the insurance companies that are paid to give the insurance companies what they want to hear.

And a lot of times you are accompanied by someone who tells you that they are a nurse and they will even hand you a card that says RN on it but what that RN means is they are a Rehabilitative Nurse or a Rehabilitation Nurse. And that is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They are just a claim adjuster but they have come up with this fancy term Rehabilitation Nurse. There is no such thing. There is no license for a Rehabilitation Nurse but again you don’t have a lawyer to tell you one way or the other. So there you go. You go into the doctor’s office. They probably under-diagnose what’s wrong with you if they diagnose anything wrong with you and if they can get away with telling you to “take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” they will do that.

There are many times many times where somebody has called us and told us this tale of woe where they have suffered a serious injury — maybe a torn rotator cuff. They are sent to the company doctor and the company rehab nurse. Or perhaps they are even able to see a doctor of their own choosing somehow yet that rehabilitation nurse goes with them, intimidates the doctor. Now she or he has no business talking to the doctor but you don’t know that, and the doctor wants to be paid. And he thinks that he has to talk to that person. The next thing you know that rehabilitation nurse is telling the doctor how to treat you. So the situation with somebody who has a rotator cuff let’s just say it’s torn — they should be doing diagnostic tests. They should be going to an orthopaedic surgeon who specializes in upper extremities shoulders for example. But instead, if its you, you go to a general orthopaedist who sends you over to the company sponsored rehab centre and somebody is pulling and twisting and turning your torn rotator cuff. Why? Because that’s all they know how to do. They are not a specialist in rehabbing injuries like that, and next thing you know four or five months later it’s being operated on. And again if you don’t know that you have a choice at least in Pennsylvania after the first 90 days for sure, you go into see a doctor who – well the example I like to use is if you were a professional athlete you wouldn’t be going to a company doctor.

You want your agent, you want your doctor, and you want your lawyer! That can be me.