- Chemical
Injury in the Workplace
- Workplace
Counseling
- Genetic
Testing
- Testing
for Chemicals
- Worker's
Compenstion Pitfalls, Barbara Rubin
- Workplace
Counseling/Information
- Consultant to the
Chemically and Electrically Sensitive for Access. Works
with individuals and public entities toward improving
access to housing, medical care, benefits, the workplace,
education and to develop self-defense
strategies for MCS/ES. E-mail Susan Molloy: susanm@cybertrails.com
-
- Job Accommodation Network (JAN) provides
information regarding work-site accommodation ideas. JAN
Human Factors Consultants provide employers, individuals
with disabilities, rehabilitation specialists and others
with practical information regarding the tools and
techniques necessary to accommodate workers with
limitations. The goal of a job accommodation is to reduce
or eliminate workplace barriers to enable an individual
with a disability to enjoy an equal employment
opportunity. The information should not be misconstrued
as legal or medical advice. JAN provides accommodation
ideas for informational purposes. www.jan.wvu.edu/media/MCS.html
or www.jan.wvu.edu/media/fragrance.html
-
- Business Coach for
the Health Callenged. My passion is to help
people dealing with health challenges and/or chronic
illnesses that desire to remain employed either by choice
or for economic need. I also work as a traditional
business coach. All of the traditional coaching methods
have to be altered for this purpose. Given my training
and personal experience with battling a chronic illness,
I am in a unique position to help. I have been a CFIDS
/MCS sufferer who has recovered and is now experiencing
good health, after suffering terribly for 4 years. Sam
Hester s_hester@sbcglobal.net www.businesscoachforthehealthchallenged.com
- I will give
anyone referred by this website, a 25% discount on their
first month's coaching! Sam Hester
-
- Book
- I'd Rather Be
Working: A Step-by-Step Guide to Financial Self-Support
for People with Chronic Illness. Gayle
Backstrom. At last, a realistic look at the
resources and opportunities available to those determined
to thrive in the face of chronic illness. Those living
with chronic illness face many unique challenges, and
among the most daunting can be the search for meaningful,
well-paying employment and the challenge of providing for
oneself. This first-of-its-kind guide helps readers
evaluate their own abilities and limitations, set
financial goals, conduct effective job searches, and
identify and utilize government and other resources. A
refreshing, constructive look at professional and
personal issues, this book is a use-it-now resource to
put the reader on the road to financial stability and
genuine accomplishment, featuring invaluable sections on:
o Setting goals to meet abilities and limitations to
Self-assessment and career guidance o Training,
vocational rehabilitation, and long distance learning-and
the potential earnings payoff o The Americans with
Disabilities Act, recent Supreme Court decisions, and the
latest developments in assistive technologies. About the
Author Gayle Backstrom (Denton, TX), the author of The
Resource Guide for the Disabled and When Muscle Pain
Won't Go Away, has had fibromyalgia since childhood. She
has taught college courses in technical writing and
business communications.
- Career/Self-Development
Paperback o 224 pages. 0-8144-7115-3 $14.95
- www.amanet.org/books/catalog/0814471153.htm
- Chemical
Protection at the Workplace
- Playing
Industrial Hygiene to Win Eileen Senn, MS, CIH.
Health and safety information for those with chemical
exposures in the workplace.
-
- Genetic
Testing
- Genetic
Testing in the Workplace. www.genewatch.org/HumanGen/Publications/Reports/GeneticTesting.pdf or www.google.com/search?q=cache:s0NcF6qqzkkJ:www.genewatch.org/HumanGen/Publications/Reports/GeneticTesting.pdf+paraoxonase+testing&hl=en&ie=UTF-
- Testing for
Chemicals
- Testing
for Chemical Injury Barbara Rubin. Chemically
injured by pesticides, an MCS shares her knowledge and
experience of toxicological testing as an aid for
personal and legal protection.
Worker's
Compensation Pitfalls
- The following letter was sent to
representatives in the NYS legislature serving on
committees related to worker's compensation and health
issues. The laws pertaining to injured workers' access to
medical care has been an important impediment to the
advancement of occupational and environmental medicine in
this country for all patients. Please feel free to
disseminate this letter in it's entirety to others in a
position to change this system.
-
- Regards,
-
- Barbara Rubin
- community-2.webtv.net/Raisyl/THEARMCHAIRACTIVIST
-
- --------------------------
- Dear Representative:
-
- I am writing to you about the
tragic deprivation of injured workers of competent
medical care with the physicians of their choice or
selected by virtue of their experience in relevant
speciality areas. Also caught in the crossfire are
physicians themselves, who may not openly choose to treat
persons with injuries and ailments originating in the
workplace because of regulations prohibiting the billing
of patients or their traditional medical insurance
policies. Injured workers are greatly discriminated
against and constitute a minority in this country that
has no legal recourse in the court system. The Worker's
Compensation (WC) system varies somewhat from state to
state but inequities in medical care appear to be a
constant.
-
- In New York, those suddenly ill and
unemployed from workplace accidents/conditions must find
the money to pay for COBRA policies (if insured at all),
which are not supposed to be paying for medical care of
this nature. The WC system has no "front" pay
to cover such costs and few doctors accept assignment by
WC. To do so will mean years of waiting for payment while
debts accumulate for a given patient. The WC system also
assumes the patient is committing fraud and sends them on
a series of Independent Medical Evaluations (IMEs), in
which the doctor is paid by those representing employers
interests. The IME physician also has no legal
responsibility for the accuracy of his conclusions under
malpractice laws and is free to muddy the waters with
statements based upon the most cursory
interview/assessment in the absence of testing or even
certification in relevant aspects of the case at hand
(e.g. toxicology, ergonomics).
-
- The injured worker cannot seek the
most qualified medical care providers on their own due to
limits on ability to pay for such services. Yet, such
consultations might yield the definitive information
which documents the injuring event or leads to an
appropriate course of treatment.
-
- Doctors are left with a host of
unsatisfactory choices causing great harm to their
patients, their own practices and to the very nature of
physician training in our society. Current options are:
-
- 1. To accept WC assignment and go
years without reimbursement while risking ultimate
refusal to pay. The patient is usually unable to assume
the burden of accumulated bills by that time.
-
- 2. To accept assignment by other
insurers. If WC is awarded however, these insurers will
demand return of all monies collected by doctors from
work related injuries (likely all fees paid). Doctors
must then return those monies and again hope for WC
payments (frequently not forthcoming) or demand monies
from patients who signed agreements to pay whatever was
not covered by assignment to medical insurance. That
again puts the physician in the position of violating law
and the patient is the loser. Doctors also risk
prosecution for misconduct under such scenarios.
-
- 3. To compromise the quality of
medical services and record keeping with respect to the
injured worker. Doctors may omit significant aspects of
etiological information or even lie in medical records
about the nature of patient's illnesses if they originate
at work. They may fail to adequately research presenting
problems since skirting the issue of a frank diagnosis of
an occupational disease permits them to bill COBRA
policies held by patients or medicare if the worker was
declared disabled by the Social Security Administration
(SSA). At the same time, documentation needed to prove WC
claims will be missing and treatment strategies may be
inadequate.
-
- As a result, the social security
administration and medicare become the default sources of
compensation and medical care for injured workers. It
saves the State Insurance Fund huge outlays and further
insulates negligent employers from investigation and
clean up of unsafe conditions. Of course, the injured
worker cannot sue for even the most egregious of injuries
in uncontested WC cases.
-
- 4. As the State Insurance Fund is
allowed to continually review WC awards already given, a
doctor who has finally received some payments stands to
risk past and future fees based upon alterations in
awards. Patients are often reviewed through the flawed
IME process and then find their benefits reduced or
eradicated on the flimsiest of excuses. By this time,
legal representation (always at the expense of the
worker), cannot be obtained since there are no financial
incentives to WC lawyers to fight threatened reductions
(e.g. percentages of back pay etc.).
-
- The discrimination in obtaining
medical care goes on forever. I have seen victims of this
abusive process become so depressed that all quality of
life is eradicated. An investigation of rates for suicide
among WC applicants is definitely in order. It is also a
strong factor in motivating physicians to eschew
continuing education in such specialty areas as
toxicology, ergonomics and other aspects of occupational
diseases which diminishes their ability to offer all
patients quality services. In the case of occupational
medicine, the economic penalties of involving oneself has
inhibited the progress of medical science in general.
-
- Please review these issues and make
them a priority for correction. I strongly suggest that
the following remedies be considered to correct this
terrible injustice:
-
- 1. Any ailment presented by a
patient should be covered by their existing health care
coverage. Illness does not wait upon definition of
responsible parties for payment and physicians cannot go
without fees
- indefinitely while patients' debts
mount without any assurances of ultimate ability to pay.
-
- 2. Upon award of WC benefits, the
state insurance fund should be responsible for contacting
the insurer who made all payments for conditions related
to work injuries and reimburse them. After all, the
injured worker is the victim and the employer or
representative of the employer (State Insurance Fund)
ought to be the responsible party taking care of the
sequela for negligence or occupational risks to workers.
-
- 3. Many workers are uninsured and
the WC process is extremely lengthy. There must be a
provision which permits medical care to be obtained
throughout this period. Upon refutation of claims by WC,
the State Insurance fund can then seek reimbursement by
the patient if no disability exists or retroactively by
medicare if a disability does exist but is not considered
work related.
-
- The Social Security Adminstration
tells us three of every ten workers will be disabled
prior to retirement years. Many others will work with
lessened productivity and quality of life due to impaired
health. We know that a significant amount of these
ailments cannot be attributed to the fragility of the
human species but are related to working conditions. WC
covers some of the greatest "at risk" groups in
America while acting in the role of attorney for
employers at no cost to them. Economics must not be
permitted to bar provision of appropriate medical care to
a large segment of society and to inhibit the progress of
an entire branch of medical science.
-
- Barbara Rubin
- P.O. Box 224
- Locust Valley, N.Y. 11560
- Raisyl@webtv.net
Contents