Iowa Workers' Compensation

A series of commissioners has held that when an authorized treating physician recommends treatment that treatment is deemed to be authorized under 85.27(4) of the Iowa Code.  In Lynch Livestock v. Bursell, No. 14-1133 (Iowa App. May 20, 2015), the Iowa Court of Appeals turns this longstanding agency rule on its head and concludes that in the context of an alternate medical care proceeding, the claimant must demonstrate that the care offered by the employer is unreasonable, notwithstanding that the care sought is recommended by the authorized treating physician.  The decision of the court of appeals could well sound the death knell of a large portion of alternate medical care proceedings by destroying the authorized physician rule. In Mr. Bursell's case, Dr. Cook, an authorized treating physician, diagnosed claimant with CRPS and referred him to Dr. Kelly, a vascular surgeon.  Dr. Kelly recommended a lumbar sympathectomy.  Defendants subsequently sent claimant to ot...

In what the deputy described as what may have been the longest alternate medical care hearing ever before the agency, the employer was found to have "actively interfered" with the care recommendations made by the treating doctor.   Dodge v. Excel Corp./Cargill Meat Solutions , No. 5032411 (AMC April 27, 2010).  The physician had restricted claimant to sitting duty only, with her leg elevated.  As a part of her light duty work, claimant was made to sit in an 8 x 10 foot room with as many as 11 other workers, and she testified that the nurses at Cargill never check her status.  Despite attempts by claimant to have the doctor change her work status and place her off work, the doctor indicated his hands were tied by the employer's indication that it had suitable work for the claimant. Although claimant's arguments were primarily about the treatment she had received at the hands of the employer, she also argued that the employer had interfered with the medical judgments...