Question

Describe workers' compensation and explain why it is important. Also, research Connecticut's worker’s compensation requirements. Summarize your findings.

Answer 1

Workers' compensation is a publicly sponsored system that pays monetary benefits to workers who become injured or disabled in the course of their employment. Workers' compensation is a type of insurance that offers employees compensation for injuries or disabilities sustained as a result of their employment

The U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs (OWCP) administers four major disability compensation programs which provides to federal workers (or their dependents) and other specific groups who are injured at work or acquire an occupational disease – providing the injured

• Wage replacement benefits
• Medical treatment
• Vocational rehabilitation
• Other benefits

Importance of workers' compensation

• Every employer needs to ensure that the workplace that employees spend time in is safe. Even in the safest workplaces, accidents happen. Workers’ compensation insurance provides financial benefits for employees who experience job-related injuries or illness to reimburse medical expenses and lost wages. The policy is no-fault, so it will provide benefits whether the fault is the employer’s, the employee’s, a co-worker’s or a customer’s. By taking advantage of a workers’ compensation policy, an employee will have a limited ability to sue for additional damages.
• Aside from being the law, having a workers’ compensation policy is an additional benefit for company's  employees and the  employees’ families. If an employee is unable to work after a work-related injury, the  insurance will cover the cost of wages while the employee is recovering. Medical care is also covered underneath the policy. The potential cost of both of these expenses is astronomical, so a single workers’ compensation policy could save tens of thousands of dollars if a single employee is hurt.
• A workers’ compensation policy also protects business. In most policies, taking advantage of the benefits means that employees agree to forfeit the right to sue your business for additional financial benefits post-accident. The policy will also prevent business  from the serious financial burden that paying for an employees’ medical care can be.

The State of Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Program requires that an employee report a work-related injury or illness to his/her employer immediately. For injuries prohibiting the employee from immediately notifying his/her supervisor, the supervisor, on behalf of the injured employee, can directly report the claim.

Employing state agencies must accept all reports of injury from an employee. The employing state agency cannot deny the employee from filing a claim. The Third Party Administrator (TPA) determines issues of compensability and causation, based in part on the information facilitated through the claim reporting process.