An injury or illness caused by your duties at work can be very serious. The last thing you want to do is suffer a debilitating injury while you’re earning a paycheck. Ideally, you’ll put the incident behind you quickly. You want to get treatment, get better, and get back to earning money as soon as possible. Fortunately, Massachusetts has strong workers’ compensation laws to protect people just like you.

Suffering an injury or illness due to work qualifies you for workers’ compensation. Massachusetts is a no-fault state, so even if you caused the injury yourself, you are eligible to receive benefits.

Workers’ compensation provides benefits beyond your immediate medical bills, too. Let’s take a look at what these benefits cover:

Medical Expenses

First and foremost, your benefits will cover any medical care you need. Whether you have to make a trip to the hospital emergency room, family doctor, or urgent care facility, workers’ compensation will provide coverage. In Massachusetts, the list of covered treatments includes, but is not limited to:

  • Work-related sickness, hearing loss, and other ailments/injuries.
  • Health conditions exacerbated by the job.
  • Mental health issues, if they can be proven to be job related.
  • Injuries that happened on the job, regardless of who caused it.
  • Repetitive stress, cuts, sprains, and other injuries happening due to your job.

Regardless of your injury or sickness, if it happened at work, you need to report it right away. Never assume you won’t be covered.

Lost Wages

In some cases, work-related injuries or sicknesses may keep you out of commission for an extended period of time. When this happens, recovering at least a portion of your wages is crucial. Massachusetts workers’ compensation law provides 60% of the injured person’s average weekly pay. This benefit requires the injured person to miss 5 or may days of work due to the disability.

Travels Costs from Medical Visits

Under Massachusetts law, recovering travel costs to medical visits is another workers’ compensation benefit. It is up to you to save receipts from gas or ride services. In addition, this also includes ambulance rides to the hospital.

Disability

Permanent disability can qualify you for extended workers’ compensation benefits. There are varying levels of disability, including:

  • Temporary Total Disability
  • Temporary Partial Disability
  • Permanent Total Disability
  • Permanent Partial Disability

The compensation you receive will depend on the severity of your injuries. It may also be determined by your ability to perform essential job functions.

Death Benefits

As unpleasant as it is to speak about, people do sometimes die in their line of work. Workers’ compensation provides benefits to the families of workers killed. They can recover, lost wages, funeral expenses, and more.

Workers’ compensation is an essential benefit for Massachusetts workers. However, this doesn’t mean insurance companies don’t try and deny legitimate claims of injured workers. If you’ve been injured at work, reach out to the team at Fitzpatrick & Associates. We’d love to listen to your story.