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Last month we reported on the Appeals Panel’s puzzling decision to distinguish “headaches” from “ongoing headaches” as separate conditions. This month, a pair of Appeals Panel Decisions suggests an emerging trend that may itself become an ongoing headache for Carriers.
Appeals Panel Decision No. 180603, decided April 19, 2018, reversed the Administrative Law Judge by determining that headaches were indeed a part of the claimant’s injury, which already included a traumatic brain injury. The case was remanded for an amended MMI/IR certification by the designated doctor with the newly compensable condition, even though a rating for headaches is (presumably) subsumed in a rating for a traumatic brain injury.
Similarly, Appeals Panel Decision No. 180602, decided April 30, 2018, remanded the case for a new certification from the DD to incorporate the AP’s finding of headaches as part of the compensable injury. Their reasoning: the claimant complained of head pain in “numerous medical records,” which is perhaps unsurprising given that the accepted injury was a scalp laceration that required repair with staples.
And only on May 16, 2018, did the Appeals Panel issue Decision No. 180702. Once again, the Administrative Law Judge excluded headaches from the compensable injury, only to suffer a reversal at the hands of the AP. This time, “periodic headaches” resulted from a concussion. As before, the judge was instructed to obtain a new certification from the designated doctor that includes a rating for “periodic headaches.”
With four of their most recent decisions focused on the addition of headaches to compensable injuries, each requiring case management and a new certification from the designated doctor, it would seem the Appeals Panel has a bit of a bee in its bonnet about this topic lately. (The Appeals Panel is respectfully cautioned that bonneted bees are also a known cause of headaches.)
Copyright 2018, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP