Common Sense Urged When Enforcing Treatment Guidelines

Medical treatment guidelines are an important tool for improving the care of injured workers, but their use must be coupled with common sense, speakers said during a webinar on Thursday. For example, it might be better to take a more holistic approach to a claim if denial of a particular treatment is going to cause the claim to grind to a prolonged halt, said Darrell Brown, executive vice president and chief claims officer for Sedgwick. He gave as an example the case of SCIF v. Sandhagen in California, where denial of an applicant's request for an MRI went all the way to the Supr...