Can I choose my own doctor to treat my workers’ compensation injury?

Since your employer is required to pay your medical bills if you're injured on the job in Florida, the employer’s insurance company determines the doctor who treats your injuries. If you don't like the doctor the insurance company chooses, you may be allowed to change physicians—but this must be done extremely carefully.

Changing Workers’ Compensation Doctors in Florida

After you report your injury, your employer’s insurance provider will give you the name of a primary care physician who you must see for treatment of your work-related injury.

If the physician refers you to a specialist, such as a skin cancer surgeon for melanoma on the job, that specialist must also be authorized by the employer’s insurance carrier before treatment with him or her begins.

Workers' compensation law allows employees to change doctors one time during the course of injury treatment. However, there are some risks involved with changing workers’ compensation physicians, such as:

• Your insurer picks the doctor. When you make a request to change doctors, you still cannot pick the physician you'll see. The insurance company has a duty to respond to your written request and select another authorized provider within five days. If the insurance representative doesn't respond within five days, you may select whatever doctor you want, and the workers' compensation insurer will have to pay the bills.
• You may have the same problems with a new doctor. Since you don't have control over which doctor you'll see, there's always a chance that you'll not like the new professional any more than the previous one.
• You cannot change back. Since you can only change doctors once for any work accident, you're not allowed to change back to your original doctor if you don't like the second physician chosen for you.

Insurance providers have reasons for choosing the physicians they allow to treat work injuries, none of which cater to the injured employee. If you're having trouble getting the treatment you need after an injury on the job, we can help. Simply fill out the quick contact form on this page today to schedule a consultation with our workers' compensation attorneys at no cost to you.