I’ve been a home health aide in the Bronx for about six years and last fall I was helping a patient transfer from the bed to a chair when she suddenly slipped and I had to catch her—threw my back out so badly I couldn’t even stand up straight for two weeks. I filed my workers comp claim right away, gave them all the medical paperwork, and honestly I thought things were moving along okay even though my employer seemed a little weird about it from the start. Then today I open the mail and there’s this letter saying my claim is denied because they claim it wasn’t work-related or something about not having enough evidence, which makes no sense since it happened right in the middle of a shift and I had a witness who saw the whole thing. I’m already behind on bills from being out of work and now I’m sitting here staring at this denial form with a headache trying to figure out what my next move even is. A neighbor who used to work in HR told me not to panic and that denials happen all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with whether you actually deserve benefits, but she said I need to act fast because there’s deadlines to appeal and doing it wrong could lock me out completely. She mentioned that finding a workers comp claim denied attorney New York would probably be my best bet because the appeals process is a whole different beast than just filing initially and insurance companies count on people giving up when they see that denial letter. Has anyone here successfully overturned a denial and can tell me how long the whole process took? I’m trying to figure out if I need to start looking for other ways to cover my expenses in the meantime.
