What happens when one of your employees is hurt at work? It’s very important to report it to your workers’ compensation insurer right away. This helps the injured employee get the best care possible and receive any benefits that are due.
Follow these four steps when an employee is injured.
1. Get the injured worker the right medical care.
If the injury is an emergency, call 911. Otherwise, if you’re an SFM policyholder, call the SFM Work Injury Hotline together with your injured employee.
2. Report the injury to your workers’ comp insurer right away.
If you’re an SFM policyholder and you’ve called the SFM Work Injury Hotline, this is already taken care of. Reporting right away is important because state law places strict limits on the amount of time claims adjusters have to determine whether an injury was work-related. The clock starts ticking as soon as the injury is reported to the employer.
3. Stay in contact with the injured worker.
Make sure your employee is getting the appropriate medical treatment. Your claims representative can help you develop a plan to bring the employee back to work and can be a great source of advice in general. At SFM, a nurse case manager is sometimes brought in as well to help make sure that injured workers get the most effective treatments.
4. Do some investigation of your own.
Try to determine if there’s a better way to manage safety so that a similar injury doesn’t happen again. This isn’t to find fault, it’s to prevent future accidents. Learn more about accident analysis on SFM’s website.
For more details, watch this video: