andyourlittledogtoo Senior Member
Posts: 504
Joined: Jul 2005
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Wednesday August 03, 2005 7:23 PM
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Don't really have enough information to answer this correctly.
Are you saying you drove that long distance from home to work every day before the injury, but now cannot? What kind of a panel? Was it an MPN panel?
You certainly have the right to be treated by a doctor closer to home if you choose, and if the current doc is not meeting your needs you do have the right to change to a different doctor. If you are subject to MPN panel choices, you still can select any MPN doctor you wish. You may not select a doctor outside of the MPN doctor panel unless there is no one close enough (within 30 miles if I recall correctly) that is on the panel.
If you are not subject to MPN panel doc choices, and your employer is not in an HCO, after 30 days the employer loses medical control and you can select any doctor you choose.
TTD is due when the IW cannot perform the duties of the job they were doing when injured. I have not seen a situation such as you are describing so I'm not sure if there'd be a difference there, but if for instance you were required to lift 50 lbs at work and your doctor said you could go back to work no problem but you can only lift 20 lbs currently during your recovery (prior to P&S), or that you cannot drive as part of your job temporarily due to the type of medication required due to your injury, then it is up to the employer to determine whether they can meet that restriction or not. If they cannot, then you are temporarily disabled, period. It does not matter that you could perform lots of jobs for other employers if you found a job somewhere else, the fact is you cannot do that job the employer has for you now and the employer can't modify it temporarily while you recover, then you are due TTD. Usually this is all on the job. What you are describing is the commute, which the employer has no control over and which is made voluntarily by you to get to the actual worksite. I'm not sure whether being impaired from your commute would trigger TTD in the same way as being unable to perform the duties of your job. If the other professionals who post in this forum have experience or knowledge in this area I'd really be interested in the answer. That situation has never presented itself to me in my professional life. My gut reaction is that it would not be considered in the same way, as the commute is not part of the job itself but is your private responsibility in order to make yourself available to the employer at his own worksite.
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"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin, real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." Alfred D'Souza
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