It’s imperative you seek advice from No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers before making any response to a Notice of Assessment in your work injury claim.
At the end of your workers’ compensation claim for work injury, the workers’ compensation insurer may issue you with a document called a “Notice of Assessment”. This document will list all your injuries sustained in your work accident and accord a degree of permanent impairment assessed by a doctor for each injury, and a total of the degree of permanent impairment assessed for all your injuries.
What is “degree of permanent impairment” for a work injury?
Taking your body’s overall functioning as 100%, a doctor trained in permanent impairment assessments will evaluate the degree your work injury has impaired your bodily function. The degree of permanent impairment is assessed as a percentage and is based on the impact the injury has on your capacity to undertake your everyday living activities. For example, your back injury sustained at work, may be assessed as resulting in permanent impairment of your capacity to undertake your everyday normal living activities of 10%.
Assessment of permanent impairment for work injuries in Queensland is undertaken in accordance with the Guide to Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, or “GEPI” as it is also known. Doctors who undertake these assessments must be accredited in evaluating permanent impairment under this Guide.
So at the end of your workers’ compensation claim, Workcover or the self insurer, will have your work injury reviewed by a GEPI trained doctor and ask for their assessment of what degree of permanent impairment your work injury has caused. The workers’ compensation insurer then issues you with a Notice of Assessment stipulating the degree of permanent impairment assessed.
Statutory Lump Sum Offers of Compensation with the Notice of Assessment
If the degree of permanent impairment stated in your Notice of Assessment is stated as more than 0%, then you will be made an offer of lump sum compensation when receiving your Notice of Assessment. The higher the degree of impairment, the greater the lump sum offer will be. Normally, the offer is around $3,000 for each 1% of permanent impairment assessed (eg. 5% degree of permanent impairment will result in an offer of approximately $15,000).
It is very important to be aware of the serious repercussions that can flow from accepting a Statutory Lump Sum Offer made with the Notice of Assessment. If your total degree of permanent impairment is less than 20% in your Notice of Assessment, you cannot take the lump sum offer and still pursue a Common Law Claim for Damages for your work injury. You must make a choice.
Typically lump sum offers of statutory compensation are quite low and will not compensate you properly for the impact your injury has on your pre-injury lifestyle and employment. This will only be achieved by bringing a Common Law Claim for Damages for your work injury where you can claim all the loss and damage sustained because of it. It is therefore extremely important that you seek the advice of expert personal injury lawyers before making any response to a these statutory lump sum offers. Making the wrong decision can mean you miss out on significant compensation.
You can learn more about Statutory Lump Sum Offers of compensation made with the Notice of Assessment, by reading our webpage post on this very subject.
Seeking Re-Assessment of your Degree of Permanent Impairment
If you don’t agree with the degree of impairment stated in the Notice of Assessment, you can choose to appeal the assessment and have your injuries reassessed by another GEPI trained doctor agreed to by the workers’ compensation insurer. If you are still not satisfied with this further assessment, you can then seek to have your injury reassessed by the Medical Assessment Tribunal (MAT). The only appeal from a reassessment by the MAT is by way of Judicial Review, which is a costly and drawn out legal process.
In the majority of cases, where a worker is intending to bring a Common Law Claim, appealing the degree of impairment is unnecessary. However, if your work injury occurred between the dates of 15 October 2013 and 30 January 2015, it may be imperative for you to seek reassessment of the degree of permanent impairment stated in your Notice of Assessment.
If your injury occurred during this time period, then you will only be entitled to bring a Common Law Claim for Damages for your work injury if you achieve a degree of permanent impairment of 6% or more. Anything less than this and you have no right to pursue Common Law Damages for your work injury. Should your injury be subject to this threshold, and you have not achieved a 6% degree of impairment in your Notice of Assessment, it is imperative that you seek legal advice as soon as possible. Failure to do this could mean you miss out on your right to achieve full and proper compensation for your work injury.
Other circumstances where seeking reassessment of your degree of permanent impairment assessment may be advisable are:
- Where a worker doesn’t have a valid Common Law Claim to pursue and is therefore reliant solely on the Statutory Lump Sum Offer to compensate for the work injury, then seeking an increased degree of permanent impairment may be advisable. Keep in mind however that seeking reassessment does not assure you of an increased impairment assessment – the assessment can be reduced on reassessment.
- Where a worker achieves 20% or more degree of impairment in the Notice of Assessment, then they have entitlement to recover some of their legal costs when pursuing their Common Law Claim. This is not afforded to those who do not achieve a 20% or more impairment. So where impairment is achieved at close to 20%, it may be advisable to seek reassessment in the hope of achieving this threshold and the right to claim a contribution to your legal costs in your Common Law Claim.
- Similarly, achieving that threshold 20% means you can take the lump sum offer with the Notice of Assessment, and still proceed with a Common Law Claim. Having that lump sum amount can be of great financial assistance to a seriously injured worker whilst their Common Law Claim is on foot and they are awaiting their claim payment. Seeking reassessment in an attempt to meet this threshold may be advisable in such case.
Time Limits Apply to Seeking Reassessment of the Degree of Permanent Impairment Stated in the Notice of Assessment
Strict time limits apply to appealing the assessed degree of permanent impairment in the Notice of Assessment. You only have 20 business days in which to appeal – so it is very important you obtain advice from personal injury lawyers, expert in work injury claims, as soon as possible.
You Must Have a Notice of Assessment for Your Work Injury Before You Can Bring A Common Law Claim for Damages
An injured worker cannot bring a Common Law Claim for Damages in Queensland until a Notice of Assessment, for at least one of the injuries from the work event, has issued. It is stated above that Workcover Queensland or the self-insurer may take steps to have your work injury assessed and issue the Notice of Assessment at the end of your workers’ compensation claim, however, this doesn’t always automatically occur.
Where the workers’ compensation insurer doesn’t take such steps, then the worker or their legal representative can make a request for the work injury to be assessed for permanent impairment and for the Notice of Assessment to issue. In such case, where you haven’t previously brought a workers’ compensation claim for your work injury, even if you achieve a degree of permanent impairment over 0%, you will have no entitlement to Statutory Lump Sum compensation. However, you will still have entitlement to bring a Common Law Claim for Damages for your work injury.
It’s Imperative You Seek the Advice of Personal Injury Lawyers Expert in Workers’ Compensation & Workplace Injury Claims
We cannot stress enough the importance of being properly advised by experts in work injury claims when making any response to the Notice of Assessment or any associated lump sum offer from the workers’ compensation insurer. This area of law is a legislative minefield and involves a complex process that must be complied with in order for you to achieve proper compensation for your work injury. It is very important you seek advice from top work injury lawyers who have experience and expertise in workers’ compensation and workplace injury claims.
No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers are Experts in Workers’ Compensation & Work Injury Claims
No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers are experts in work injury and workers’ compensation claims and is headed up by a Senior Personal Injury Lawyer who has previously acted on behalf of, worked for and been trained in this area of law by Queensland’s major workers’ compensation insurer. We can put your personal injury claim on the right track to ensure you achieve the best possible compensation result. You can read more about No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers on our “About Us” webpage.
If you have a query about your workplace claim or workers’ compensation claim, contact us today. We are available 24 hours a day to take your enquiry and all enquiries are FREE of charge, are without any obligation and are 100% confidential. And we are a No Win No Fee personal injury law firm so this means we handle your case for you on a No Win No Fee basis, with no upfront costs or payments required during your personal injury claim. We only charge you at the end of your claim when you receive your compensation, and if we don’t get you compensation, then you pay us nothing at all.
So give us a call on 1300 388 383, Chat with us through our Livechat service, send us an email or submit your enquiry via a FREE Instant Case Appraisal form on our website.