Receiving notice that your OWCP claim has been accepted is a milestone. After weeks or even months of waiting, most claimants feel relieved and assume the difficult part is over. Obtaining claim acceptance is a great development and a significant step toward receiving benefits. However, it isn’t the finish line. It’s often the beginning of the next phase of your recovery and your compensation.
So, what happens after a claim is accepted? It all depends on the nature of the injury, how well the claimant recovers, and whether any permanent impairments remain.
Once a claim has been accepted, the focus should remain on recovery. Depending on the claimant’s injury, that may involve physician visits, diagnostic testing, surgery, physical therapy, medications, or other necessary treatments related to the accepted condition, and medical records continue to play an important role.
Clear physician narratives and thorough documentation will demonstrate how a condition progresses over time. As we discuss in our article on OWCP medical documentation, strong medical evidence supports claims long after they have been accepted.
If an accepted injury prevents a claimant from performing their regular job duties, they may be eligible for wage-loss compensation while they recover. The duration of those benefits depends on the medical condition and the claimant’s ability to return to work. Some workers recover quickly, while others require months or years of treatment before they’re medically cleared to resume their duties.
Many federal workers believe that once they return to work, their OWCP case is over; that’s one of the biggest misconceptions we consistently encounter. Returning to work does not automatically eliminate the right to future compensation. If permanent impairment remains after recovery, additional benefits may still be available.
We’ve explored this topic in detail in our accompanying article on schedule award benefits, where we explain why returning to work doesn’t necessarily end your compensation rights.
At some point, your physician may determine that you’ve reached maximum medical improvement (MMI); this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve fully recovered. Instead, it means your condition has stabilized and additional treatment is not expected to improve the accepted injury by much.
If permanent loss of function remains after maximum medical improvement, a physician may perform an impairment evaluation using the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment; this will yield an OWCP impairment rating that measures the permanent effects of the injury and may become an important factor in determining whether additional compensation is available.
Many workers don’t realize that an accepted OWCP claim can eventually lead to a schedule award. Schedule awards compensate injured federal employees for permanent impairment involving specific body parts such as the shoulders, knees, arms, hands, hearing, or vision. These benefits are separate from wage-loss compensation and focus on the lasting physical effects of an accepted injury.
Even after a claim has been accepted, documentation remains essential. Missing appointments, inconsistent medical records, delayed reporting of new symptoms, or incomplete physician narratives can all create complications later on; we see this begin with relatively small mistakes that become much harder to correct over time.
We encourage injured workers to read our accompanying articles on why delaying an OWCP claim can hurt your case and common OWCP claim mistakes, which highlight situations that can affect otherwise valid claims.
An accepted OWCP claim is an important step, but it is rarely the final one. Working with an experienced team of federal workers’ compensation lawyers/OWCP lawyers can help you understand what to expect after your claim is accepted and ensure every available benefit is fully considered.
If your OWCP claim has recently been accepted and you have questions about what comes next, contact IFW Law Group to discuss your options.
One of the most important milestones in a federal workers’ compensation case is reaching maximum medical improvement (MMI). Many claimants mistakenly believe MMI means they’ve fully recovered. However, it simply...
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The AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment – for many claimants, it’s unfamiliar terminology that sounds overly technical or something only doctors need to understand. However, the AMA...
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Most federal workers breathe a sigh of relief when they finally receive their OWCP impairment rating. After months or sometimes years of medical treatment, it can feel like the last...
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