Light Duty and Return to Work in Pennsylvania Workers Comp

The decision point

A return to work offer usually arrives in writing, often after a Notice of Ability to Return to Work. It is not a suggestion. Refusing suitable work without good reason is grounds for the insurer to suspend or modify your benefits, and they will file to do exactly that.

Equally, accepting a job that exceeds your restrictions can injure you further and can be used to argue you were more capable than you claimed. Neither reflex, refuse it or just try it, is the right one.

What makes an offer suitable

Compare the offer against the actual restrictions your treating physician wrote, line by line:

• Weight limits. Does the role require lifting above what you are cleared for, even occasionally?
• Posture and duration. Standing, sitting, overhead reach, bending, and for how long at a stretch.
• Hours. A full shift when you are cleared for four hours is not within restrictions.
• Travel and distance. A position at a facility two hours away is a different question from the same job at your own site.
• Whether the job actually exists. Roles invented to generate a suspension petition, sometimes called a paper job, are challengeable.

Send us the offer and your restrictions together. The comparison is usually quick, and it is the whole question.

The labor market survey

Where your own employer has nothing suitable, the insurer may commission a vocational expert to identify jobs in your area that you could supposedly perform, and then seek to reduce your benefits based on that theoretical earning power rather than any actual job offer.

These surveys are frequently attackable. Positions listed may no longer exist, may not match your restrictions when examined properly, may require qualifications or a license you do not hold, or may be beyond reasonable travel. They deserve genuine scrutiny rather than acceptance.

If you try it and cannot do it

This happens often and it is not a failure. Report the difficulty promptly and specifically, to both your employer and your treating physician, and have it recorded. A person who attempts light duty in good faith and cannot sustain it is in a considerably better position than one who refused outright, provided the attempt and its outcome are documented.

Say what specifically you could not do, and after how long. “It hurt” is a weaker record than “I could not maintain overhead reach beyond twenty minutes”.

Partial benefits while working reduced hours

If you return at lower earnings than before the injury, you may be entitled to partial disability benefits making up a proportion of the difference. Check the calculation. Insurers frequently use a pre-injury wage figure that omits overtime or concurrent employment, and that omission runs through every payment that follows.