Report the injury to your employer by telling your supervisor right away. If your injury or illness developed over time, report it as soon as you learn or believe it was caused by your job.

Reporting promptly helps prevent problems and delays in receiving benefits, including medical care you may need. If your employer does not learn about your injury within 30 days and this prevents your employer from fully investigating the injury and how you were injured, you could lose your right to receive workers’ compensation benefits.

Get emergency treatment if you need it. Your employer may tell you where to go for treatment. Tell the health care provider who treats you that your injury or illness is job-related.

Fill out a claim form and give it to your employer. Your employer must give or mail you a claim form within one working day after learning about your injury or illness. If your employer doesn’t give you the claim form you can download it from the forms page of the DWC website.

A medical provider network (MPN) is a group of health care providers set up by your employer’s insurance company and approved by DWC’s administrative director to treat workers injured on the job. Each MPN includes a mix of doctors specializing in work-related injuries and doctors with expertise in general areas of medicine. If your employer is in an MPN your workers’ compensation medical needs will be taken care of by doctors in the network unless you were eligible to predesignate your personal doctor and did so before your injury happened.

If you have a work-related injury or illness, your employer is required by law to pay for workers’ compensation benefits. You could get hurt by:

One event at work, such as hurting your back in a fall, getting burned by a chemical that splashes on your skin or getting hurt in a car accident while making deliveries.

–or–

Repeated exposures at work, such as hurting your wrist from doing the same motion over and over or losing your hearing because of constant loud noise.

Your primary treating physician (PTP) is the physician with the overall responsibility for treatment of your injury or illness. Generally, your employer selects the PTP you will see for the first 30 days, however, in specified conditions, you may be treated by your predesignated physician or medical group. If a physician says you still need treatment after 30 days, you may be able to switch to the physician of your choice. Different rules apply if your employer is using an HCO or a medical provider network (MPN).