It was an interesting, challenging, chaotic, and unsmiling worker's
compensation (WC) world I entered in 1971. WC patients were very
different from the "textbook" patients I had studied in medical school
and managed as a general practitioner. There were no written guidelines
for doctors. Insurance companies, attorneys, and WC "referees" (judges)
were reluctant to send injured workers to doctors unfamiliar with the
system. Fortunately for me, there was a shortage of WC doctors in my
local area and referral sources gave me a try. Unfortunately, over the
next few years I made so many medical-legal terminology mistakes that
referral sources were repeatedly irate. "I'll never send you another
patient," they would say. "Alright, but at least tell me what I did
wrong." Their criticisms were collected on separate sheets of paper and
stacked in a corner. By 1977 that stack was as high as my knee. The
time was ripe to write a book on the subject - just for me. Over the
next two years every spare moment was spent investigating medical-legal
issues. In addition to utilizing the law library, bits and pieces of
information were gathered from several judges, attorneys, raters, and
claims examiners. In 1979, I had finished writing an 800-page book,
titled "Industrial Orthopaedics". This book has subsequently been
invaluable in helping me establish and expand upon mental skeletal
frameworks for increasingly complex and varied medical-legal issues.
Much of that information is herein related.
The Handbook for Workers Compensation Doctors
