Month: September 2024

Common Pitfalls With Filing OWCP Work Injury Claims and CA2 Injury Claims

I recently attended a union meeting where I spoke about some common pitfalls associated with filing OWCP claims along with several reasons why folks aren’t filing CA-2 injuries. We love talking to federal employees about OWCP workers comp issues. Teaching you about this complicated system will go along way towards helping more federal employees get their OWCP work injury claims accepted by the Department of Labor.

When it comes to filing a CA-2 injury, the most common mistake is not telling your supervisor you have been experiencing a problem until the very moment you submit your forms or ask to file. If you are experiencing pain, discomfort or have a diagnosed condition that is becoming worse, then you need to say something NOW. If you don’t, they may very well challenge your claim.

So, always remember to communicate these problems with your supervisors, even if you’re not filing an OWCP work injury claim yet. Problems with filing OWCP work injury claims can be avoided by telling your supervisor what’s going on when you first notice a problem. This doesn’t mean that each time your back hurts you need to file a claim, but if you are making management aware you are experiencing an issue, then when it comes time to file, they will be well aware and will now be able to help you, instead of work against you.

Tragically Low OWCP Claims Acceptance Rates for Federal Employees

Over 1 million Federal Employees work for the USPS and the VA, each of which have extremely low OWCP injury claim acceptance rates. We attend meetings every month with rooms full of these federal employees, and when asked for a show of hands as to who is injured or knows someone who is, more than 70% of the room raises their hands.

Look at the picture below taken partially from OSHA.gov’s federal injury and illness statistics. 6.67% of USPS employees and 2.2% of VA employees had accepted OWCP injury claims (in 2017). As you can see, total cases excludes cases that were denied because the person didn’t work for the federal government (so shouldn’t be counted anyways), wasn’t able to prove that an injury actually occurred, couldn’t prove the injury happened while at work, and couldn’t show that the injury was because of work. In other words, BAD DOCTORS’ NARRATIVES ARE CAUSING DENIED CASES.

Why did I say that bad doctors’ narratives are causing denied claims? Because reports should clearly explain these points so the case never gets denied. It’s not enough to fill out and submit your CA1 or CA2 forms. It’s not enough that your supervisors may not dispute your injury. Going to the company doctor and sadly to the VA doctor when you’re injured is almost never good enough. YOU MUST GO TO A DOCTOR WHO IS TRAINED AND COMPETENT IN OWCP.

True Story: I just talked to a lady on the phone who initially chose a doctor who I guarantee will cause her OWCP injury claim to be denied. I never try to get people to leave their doctors. Your doctor is your choice – period. After I explained what was going to almost certainly happen to her, she wanted to go ahead and stick it out. No problem. Call me after Department of Labor has mailed out your denial letter. How can I be so sure the case will be denied? Look again at the picture above: less than 6% of those employees will have an accepted claim. 94% will not until there is a better understanding of what to do and what doctor to go to after an OWCP work injury.

Greater than 97% of patients have ACCEPTED OWCP injury claims

We have made it our business to teach federal employees what to do when they’re injured at work. That education is a huge reason the OWCP injury claim acceptance rate will go up in the future. However, while you have the right to choose whatever doctor you want for a federal work injury, the wrong choice will lead to a denied claim. So, choose carefully.

We’re helping to educate injured federal employees all over the country. However, in some places, our doctors can actually help get your OWCP workers comp injury claims accepted so you can get help without paying money out of your own pocket and without using your own sick and vacation time.

OWCP CA-2 Injuries: USPS Letter Carriers, Is Your Job Getting Easier Tomorrow?

Letter Carriers for the United States Postal Service can best be described as FEDERAL ATHLETES.

Your job description describes physical activities that over time must lead to bodies breaking down. The key term there is “over time”. This is exactly why the Department of Labor allows for federal employees to get treatment for conditions that result from hard word done over a long period of time. These conditions are reported using the OWCP form CA-2, “Notice of Occupational Disease and Claim for Compensation”.

The CA-2 is used for reporting injuries and illnesses that develop over 2 or more work shifts. 2 or more. I know letter carriers (and other federal employees from other agencies and within the postal service) who spend entire careers delivering the mail. 2 or more shifts? Try 20 or 30 years or more. The average American probably doesn’t understand what a USPS letter carrier is required to do in a typical work shift. Let’s take a look at some of it here.

A letter carrier is required to work an 8 hour shift, but if asked by the supervisor to work overtime, is required to work up to 4 more hours (for a total of 12). Letter carriers are required to carry a satchel around their back or over their shoulder that weighs up to 35 pounds. All carriers are required to load and deliver packages weighing up to 70 pounds. (Side note: go to a gym today and lift a 50 pound dumbbell and imagine doing that throughout your day, every day. Then add 20 pounds.) When delivering mail, carriers must bend down or stretch over obstacles to place the mail in a box while the 35 pound satchel is on their back or shoulder. And this is done in all weather conditions: extreme heat, pouring rain, freezing ice or snow, which creates a hazard of slips and falls, and carriers are constantly twisting and turning in the vehicle to deliver the mail.

Extreme physical stress is constantly placed on the letter carrier’s back, neck, shoulders, and knees by walking five to eight miles or more a day over all kinds of terrain and in all weather conditions. I talked to a carrier in Dallas, TX who said she walked 23 miles that day. That’s 3 miles short of a marathon.

In extremely hot places, carriers are required to do their jobs in 100+ degree temperatures causing heat exhaustion, which can dehydrate and break down muscles. In cold weather places, carriers are required to do their jobs in frigid temperatures with snow and ice that cause carriers to slip and fall and hurt knees, ankles, backs, and shoulders in the process.

So, does anyone think you’re job is going to get easier tomorrow? Next week? Next month? NO. And too many letter carriers are making the decision to not go through the difficult and complicated OWCP process and just suffer with injuries and struggle through daily work activities. Let me tell you something: just “sucking it up” actually makes your job HARDER. Lift that 70 pound tray with back pain. Step up and down from your mail truck with knee pain. Put that satchel back over your painful shoulder. Limp your way through tomorrow’s 10-mile route.

Your injuries are making your jobs harder and the federal government has given you a way to make it better. FILL OUT YOUR CA-2 FORMS AND TURN THEM IN TO YOUR SUPERVISOR TODAY. This allows you to get your painful condition accepted by OWCP and get treatment while you continue doing your job. THIS MAKES YOUR JOB EASIER. DOL doesn’t want you to suffer with painful conditions. On the CA-10, “What a Federal Employee Should Do When Injured at Work,” DOL mandates that you report your conditions IMMEDIATELY and fill out your CA-2 form with your supervisor. So, do it. Don’t suffer through it.

The CA-2 form exists so that federal employees, such as the USPS letter carrier, can get help for painful conditions and continue to work. America needs its mail delivered, but it doesn’t need its letter carriers to break down in the process.

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) OWCP Work Injuries

In 2016, 2.39% of VA employees had OWCP injury claims that were accepted. This accepted OWCP claims rate is lower than the average of all federal agencies (3.19%), and this is due to a number of factors that we will discuss here.

VA employees have a wide range of duties that potentially could lead to work injuries. Nurses have to lift patients. Maintenance staff climb ladders and lift heavy equipment. Janitorial staff could slip on wet floors. Administration staff lift heavy boxes of paper along with a variety of other heavy items. Of course, these are just examples. Lots of other situations could lead to injuries.

So, when VA workers suffer work-related injuries, they have some obstacles that other federal employees rarely have to deal with. First, the VA is a medical agency: hospitals and outpatient facilities. There is a false belief that injured VA employees are required to go to VA doctors when they’re hurt at work. This is simply not true. An excerpt of the law from OWCP says the following:

Agency personnel may not interfere with the employee’s right to choose a physician, nor may they require an employee who claims an injury to go to a physician who is employed by or under contract to the agency before going to the physician of the employee’s choice.

In other words, VA employees can not be forced to go to VA doctors when they suffer OWCP work injuries. Don’t get me wrong – VA doctors are world-class physicians. They are some of the very best doctors in the world. They just aren’t specifically trained in OWCP. Without this specific training, OWCP injury claims get denied.

Another problem VA employees deal with is simply not knowing what to do when they are hurt on the job. DOL has a great document called a CA-10: What a Federal Employee Should Do When Injured at Work. VA employees need to be familiar with this document. It’s so important.

To summarize, here’s what it says:

Report your injury immediately to your supervisor.
Tell your supervisor to give you a CA-16 to authorize medical care. This step also says you can choose your own doctor.
File a CA-1 or CA-2 when reporting your injury. This must be filled out by the injured employee and the supervisor.
Obtain a receipt from your supervisor for the filing or your CA-1 or CA-2.
Elect to use sick or annual time or elect Continuation of Pay (COP) in case you have to be off work when you’re unable to work full duty.

The next problem is one that all federal employees deal with, and that is not being able to find a willing and trained doctor who understands and accepts OWCP. The nation’s biggest problem with respect to OWCP federal workers compensation is a massive shortage of willing, trained doctors who specialize in DOL federal workers comp according to federal guidelines. When you can’t find doctors who understand OWCP, injury claims are denied – period. When OWCP injury claims are denied, they’re not counted in the annual injury statistics.

The final problem we’ll discuss here is that many federal employees fear being fired if they report an OWCP work injury. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE FIRED FOR REPORTING AN INJURY. Look back at step 1 from the CA-10 above. Federal employees are REQUIRED to report work injuries. Those 5 steps above ARE THE LAW. Supervisors can’t fire you for following the law. Some supervisors aren’t well trained in OWCP and may not understand your rights or their responsibilities. The CA-10 helps with that.

We actually had a supervisor who threatened a federal employee that he was going to be fired. Of course that never happened. We showed him the LAW. That employee still has their job. We’ve talked with lots of federal employees who have had careers of 20 years, 30 years and more. We asked them how many people they ever saw get fired for filing an OWCP federal work injury. Every single person answered “nobody”. In all of their years on the job, these career federal employees couldn’t think of a single person who was fired for filing a work injury. If just doesn’t happen.

2.39% is the percentage of VA employees who have ACCEPTED OWCP INJURY CASES. Denied cases are not counted. The real shame of it all is that VA employees have such an important job helping our nation’s veterans. While they’re helping veterans, who’s helping them? If we don’t take care of our VA personnel, who’s going to help veterans? Federal employees make this country go. When they break we have to fix them. We have to get their OWCP injury claims accepted so they can get better without paying money from their own pocket and without using their own sick and vacation time. When we can get their OWCP claims accepted, they can get all of the treatment needed so they can get back to work without re-injury.

Don’t Search ACS for Doctors Who Specialize in DOL Federal Workers Comp According to Federal Guidelines

Time after time, we hear injured federal employees complain that they were told to search ACS to find an doctor near them after they were hurt on the job. ACS FRUSTRATES EVERYONE. It’s frustrating for a couple of reasons.

1. Searching Google for “ACS” brings up at least a dozen search results that have nothing to do with federal workers comp. I just did that and here’s what I found on the first 2 pages of Google:
  - A financial lender (not OWCP)
  - American Chemical Society (not OWCP)
  - The Census (not OWCP)
  - American Cancer Society (not OWCP)
  - American College of Surgeons (not OWCP)
  - Hearing Protection Devices (not OWCP)
  - An Athletic Website (not OWCP)
  - An Education Site (not OWCP)
  - American Constitution Society (not OWCP)
  - An IT Company (not OWCP)
  - Hubble Telescope (not OWCP)
  - The FAA (not OWCP)

Searching ACS resulted in exactly ZERO search results from a site listing FIC Trained Federal Work Injury Doctors.

If you’re able to successfully search for ACS, you have to select from 3 programs, of which nearly nobody knows which to select. If they get past this section, they have to select a series of boxes, some of which require the user to have some healthcare knowledge. And IF they get past all of this, the list of doctors is usually very long, and when you call those doctors, MOST OF THEM DON’T ACCEPT OWCP.

Federal Employees constantly complain that searching ACS results in multiple doctors saying they don’t accept OWCP

We’re trying to make it easier for injured federal employees to find good, trained, willing, qualified doctors who specialize in DOL federal workers comp according to federal guidelines. We travel all over the country educating federal employees on their rights and responsibilities in the event they are injured on the job. The trouble we find in many areas is when people in leadership positions know about these willing and qualified doctors who specialize in DOL federal workers comp according to federal guidelines in their areas, but they STILL TELL PEOPLE TO SEARCH ACS.

OWCP Workers Comp Injuries: Supervisors Threat of Firing Injured Workers

Yesterday, we heard of a federal employee who was threatened with his job after he went outside of the hospital he worked for to find a doctor who could help him with his OWCP federal workers comp injury. He was threatened that he would be fired. He was also threatened to be reassigned to a job he had never done before. All of this was because he decided to find his own doctor who specializes in DOL federal workers comp according to federal guidelines after he was hurt at work.

First, let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: SUPERVISORS CAN NOT FIRE YOU FOR FILING AN OWCP WORK INJURY AND CHOOSING YOUR OWN DOCTOR. All federal employees have the right to choose their own doctor for an OWCP federal workers comp injury. This is federal law. Federal workers are protected against these threats. In fact, the actual wording of the law is this: “An employee is entitled to initial selection of physician for treatment of an injury.” It goes on to say, “Agency personnel may not interfere with the employee’s right to choose a physician, nor may they require an employee who claims an injury to go to a physician who is employed by or under contract to the agency before going to the physician of the employee’s choice.”

In other words, you can choose your own doctor and your supervisor, HR representative, safety officer, etc can not interfere with this or require you to go to the company doctor. So, please don’t feel scared to file a federal workers comp injury claim and don’t worry about being fired if you go to a doctor that your supervisor doesn’t want you to go to. Initial choice of physician is so critical because most doctors don’t understand OWCP. Great doctors that write bad reports and who don’t know how to handle an OWCP claim will get your case denied and you will lose all of your work injury benefits. Protect yourself and choose a doctor who is an OWCP-trained expert.