Work-related hip injuries in Arizona can be the basis for workers’ compensation claims. Hip injuries are categorized as “unscheduled” injuries under Arizona’s workers’ compensation system. You can also receive a negotiated settlement for your hip injury claim.
Nationally, the average workers’ compensation settlement for a hip injury is about $65,000. This average settlement figure can vary considerably, based on the nature and severity of the hip injury. Some industry surveys and informal studies suggest hip injury settlements can reach tens of thousands of dollars, though there is no authoritative national average, and outcomes vary significantly by state and injury severity.
To some extent, the negotiating skill of your workers’ compensation attorney can also be a factor in how much compensation you receive for an employment-related hip injury settlement. That is why it is important to have an experienced workers’ compensation law firm, like Matt Fendon Law Group, on your side when you are negotiating with a workers’ compensation insurance company.
To speak with one of our Arizona workers’ compensation lawyers in a free consultation about your hip injury workers’ compensation claim, call us at (800) 229-3880 or use our online contact form.
What Factors Go Into Valuing a Workers’ Compensation Hip Injury Settlement?
The starting point in determining the potential value of your job-related hip injury settlement is to understand how Arizona’s workers’ compensation system compensates these injuries. Workers’ compensation provides for the following kinds of compensation in hip injury cases:
Payment for Medical Expenses
Workers’ compensation benefits will pay for all of your reasonable and necessary medical costs related to a work-related hip injury. This includes emergency care, inpatient hospital treatment including surgery or multiple surgeries, outpatient medical appointments, prescription medications, physical therapy and rehabilitation, future medical care, and medical devices.
Temporary Disability Benefits
While you are healing from your hip injury, and before you reach your point of maximum medical improvement, workers’ compensation will pay your temporary, partial wage replacement benefits up to 66 ⅔% of your average monthly wage before the injury, up to an amount set by statute.
Permanent Disability Benefits
If you experience long-term consequences from your hip injury, you may qualify for permanent benefits under Arizona workers’ compensation. Scheduled permanent disabilities are governed by Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) Section 23‑1044(B), while unscheduled permanent disabilities are compensated under ARS 23‑1044(C) based on loss of earning capacity.
Hip injuries are unscheduled injuries for purposes of Arizona workers’ compensation. This means that the basis for calculating how much compensation you can receive is your loss of earning capacity, based on the following considerations:
- Whether your hip injury impairment is permanent
- Whether you can return to your pre-injury job, or work in another job that pays a similar wage
- Any work restrictions you will have to be under if you return to work, such as whether you can stand, walk, or lift as part of your job
- Your work history and whether you have any transferable skills
- Your age and education
The calculation for loss of earning capacity generally means that if you cannot go back to your pre-injury job but can still find work, you can receive benefits amounting to 55% of the difference between your date of injury average monthly wage (AMW) and the wages you are able to earn after your claim is closed. Depending on the severity of your hip injury, these payments can continue, subject to further review or for the rest of your life.
Important: Workers’ Compensation vs. Personal Injury Claims
It is important to understand that Arizona workers’ compensation does not cover pain and suffering damages. Workers’ compensation benefits are limited to medical expenses, lost wages, and disability payments. If a third party—someone other than your employer or co-employee—contributed to your hip injury, you may be able to file a separate personal injury claim to seek additional financial compensation for pain and suffering, chronic pain, and other non-economic damages.
An experienced personal injury lawyer can evaluate whether you have a viable third-party personal injury claim in addition to your workers’ compensation claim.
Preparing for Hip Injury Settlement Negotiations
Before you approach the insurance company to seek a workers’ compensation settlement for your hip injury, you can take some steps that will help strengthen your negotiation position:
- Report your hip injury to your employer. Reporting your work injury to your employer is a necessary step to receive workers’ compensation benefits. If you do not do this, it could jeopardize your ability to claim benefits, and if you lose this ability, it will be harder to convince the employer’s workers’ compensation insurer to negotiate a settlement with you.
- Seek medical attention for your hip injury. You will need to be able to support your workers’ compensation claim and your settlement efforts with evidence. An important part of this supporting evidence will be your medical records of diagnosis and treatment of your hip injury.
- Take notes and keep records of communications. Another element of your supporting evidence to back up your workers’ compensation claim and to support you in negotiations with an insurance company is to have a detailed account of how your injury occurred and any communications you have had with your doctor, your employer, and any doctor your employer has hired to examine you.
- Follow through with your medical treatment plan. Insurance companies will be looking for any way to weaken or discredit your claim for a hip injury, and one thing they will check is whether you are complying with your doctor’s treatment plan. Do not ignore or deviate from this treatment plan.
- Contact an experienced Arizona workers’ compensation attorney. As we will see below, insurance company claim adjusters are skilled negotiators, and they will be constantly looking for ways to reduce or even deny all or part of your hip injury settlement. If you have an experienced attorney to represent you in these negotiations, you can reduce the risk of receiving unfair compensation.
What Considerations Go Into Negotiating a Hip Injury Settlement?
The first consideration in settlement negotiations is whether the workers’ compensation insurance carrier will offer a settlement. Not every workers’ compensation claim will result in a settlement amount. You may become more likely to receive a settlement offer if any of the following apply to your claim:
- You have been out of work for a prolonged period of time.
- You have reached maximum medical improvement and will need permanent disability benefits.
- Your hip injury will require intensive medical care, long-term treatment, or both.
If the insurance company negotiates a settlement with you, here are some of the common elements that will go into the negotiations:
- What were your pre-injury wages? The more you received before the hip injury, the more likely it is that this will increase your settlement compensation.
- What were the requirements of your pre-injury job? Can you return to it? If not, then replacing your lost earning capacity can be a factor in calculating the settlement amount.
- What are your medical treatment needs? The more expensive your medical treatment requirements are to recover from a hip injury, like recovering from broken hip injuries that require hip replacement surgery, the more your settlement amount will likely need to be to cover those costs.
- How strong is your medical evidence to support your claim? The insurance company will want to see as much supporting medical evidence as possible to document your injury, your prospects of recovery, and your potential long-term treatment needs. The more evidence you can provide, the stronger your negotiating position will be.
- Did you suffer any other work-related injuries in connection with the hip injury? A hip injury can affect other parts of your body, including your back, knee, spinal cord, or legs. Your settlement should take into account future medical needs that might arise in connection with any of these possible related injuries.
What Form of Settlement Will You Pursue?
Settlements with insurance companies can take different forms, including structured settlements and lump sums, which are often part of a full-and-final settlement.
Structured Settlements
A structured settlement is payable in installments over time. The insurance company usually purchases an annuity from which these payments are made to you. The main purpose of this kind of settlement structure is to provide you with long-term financial security. This makes a structured settlement a good option if you are suffering from a permanent disability, long-term wage loss, or ongoing medical support needs.
Full-and-Final Settlements
A full-and-final settlement is usually paid in a lump sum that is meant to pay you for all your present and future medical expenses, along with a future indemnity to cover lost wages.
A full-and-final settlement requires approval by the Industrial Commission of Arizona (the ICA). Once this approval is in hand, this form of settlement will permanently close your workers’ compensation claim.
- The main advantages of a full-and-final settlement are that you receive all of your money up front and are not restricted in how you spend that money.
- The main disadvantage is that if you miscalculate your future medical needs, under the terms of a full-and-final settlement, you waive your right to reopen the claim to cover additional medical treatment costs, or to rearrange any permanent disability benefits you receive.
Your workers’ compensation attorney can help you to decide which of these options is best for you in your hip injury settlement strategy.
How Much Resistance Can You Expect From The Insurance Company?
Another potentially significant factor in insurance company settlement negotiations is that the more likely it is that your hip injury will be permanent and costly to compensate you for, the stronger the incentive will be for the insurance company to fight your claim.
Insurance companies are profit-oriented, and insurance claim adjusters can be tough and wily negotiators on behalf of their employers. These adjusters can use a variety of tactics to try to get you to settle for less than the maximum compensation you need.
Sometimes these tactics can be subtle, like offering you a quick settlement amount that is usually much less than you could negotiate. Other tactics can be meant to wear you down into accepting a low-ball settlement offer, like constantly demanding more documentation to support your claim or being slow to respond to your communications.
Still, other claim adjuster methods can be more aggressive. For example, the insurer may hire a private investigator to follow you, or to monitor your social media accounts, hoping to catch you doing something that can be used to challenge your claims about the effect of your hip injury on your ability to engage in work or daily life activities. Or, the adjuster may argue that your injury was pre-existing in nature, or that you contributed to the accident at work that caused it.
What Should You Do if You Receive a Settlement Offer?
When negotiations reach the point where the workers’ compensation insurance company makes you a settlement offer, then you will have three options:
- You can accept the settlement.
- You can reject the settlement and continue receiving benefits through Arizona workers’ compensation.
- You can try to negotiate for a better settlement offer.
Like helping you to decide which kind of settlement type is best for your specific situation, your workers’ compensation attorney can give you guidance on whether you should accept the settlement offer or choose an alternative response to the insurer.
Have You Suffered a Hip Injury at Work?
Our purpose in this blog post is to familiarize you with some of the basic factors and considerations that go into negotiating a fair settlement amount for a hip-related workplace injury, and to give you a basic idea of how the average compensation for hip injury works.
It is difficult to say for certain what you might receive in an “average” workers’ compensation settlement for a hip injury. How much compensation you receive from a settlement depends on how well you and your workers’ compensation lawyer navigate the process of preparing your claim, gathering the evidence you need to support it, and presenting a strong negotiating posture with the insurance company.
At Matt Fendon Law Group, our law firm’s attorneys have decades of combined experience representing injured Arizona workers in seeking compensation through settlement negotiations. We understand the key issues you need to address and how to counter insurance company tactics, whether subtle or hardball.
To speak with an experienced Arizona workers’ compensation settlement lawyer, call our office at any time at (800) 229-3880 or reach us online to schedule a free consultation with our legal team to evaluate your hip injury compensation claim.
