As our Oregon workers’ compensation industry navigates the impact of the novel coronavirus (“COVID-19”), Reinisch Wilson Weier PC is providing the following starting points to help you review and process COVID-19-related workers’ compensation claims. [NOTE: “COVID-19” is short for coronavirus disease. The actual name of the virus is “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or…

Employers are often caught off-guard when a Washington Department of Labor and Industries’ workers’ compensation audit results in a daunting Order of Assessment demanding back payment of industrial insurance premiums, penalties and accruing interest due to the misclassification of covered workers. Simply labeling a contractor as “independent” does not take away the workers’ compensation protections…

On remand from the Oregon Court of Appeals, the Oregon Workers’ Compensation Board recently found that although a combined condition had been accepted and a current combined condition denial issued, the material cause standard applied for determining compensability of a diagnostic MRI. In Daniel B. Slater,[1] the worker’s claim was accepted for a medial collateral…

To authorize or not to authorize? Authorization of treatment is a tricky issue for Washington self-insured employers trying to strike a balance between restoring an injured worker’s function and running afoul of Washington’s compensable consequences doctrine, which can hold an employer or insurer responsible for issues stemming from treatments provided under a claim. The Washington…

In a very disappointing decision for employers and insurers issued on August 8, 2019, the Oregon Supreme Court held that the presence of a legally cognizable preexisting condition is no longer sufficient to apportion permanent impairment in the absence of combined condition processing. In Caren v. Providence Health System Oregon, [1] the injured worker sustained a…