District of Columbia: Employer Not Entitled to Change in Employee’s Treating Physician

An employer has no right to request a change of an injured employee’s attending physician under the District of Columbia’s Workers’ Compensation Act, held a D.C. appellate court. The Office of Workers’ Compensation initially granted the employer’s request, but the Compensation Review Board vacated the OWC’s order, concluding that employers had no such statutory right. The employer contended the OWC had the authority to order a change of treating physician whenever it was in the employee’s best interests, regardless of which party initiated the request. The court agreed that the OWC had the authority “unilaterally” to order a change in an employee’s attending physician; nothing in the statute explicitly granted an employer or insurer the right to request a change of the employee’s physician before the OWC.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Clark Constr. Group, Inc. v. District of Col. Dept’ of Empl. Servs., 2015 D.C. App. LEXIS 375 (Aug. 20, 2015) [2015 D.C. App. LEXIS 375 (Aug. 20, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.02 [94.02]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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