Pennsylvania: 18 Months of Home Remedies Do Not Constitute Medical Treatment

Where an employer’s examining physician opined that the workers’ compensation claimant had fully recovered from her injuries—the physician based his opinion, in large part, on the fact that claimant had not sought medical treatment from any physician for 18 months—the workers’ compensation judge was justified in terminating the claimant’s continuing benefits, held the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. The appellate court added that the judge and the state Board appropriately found that the opinion of the employer’s expert was not negated by claimant’s testimony that she had been engaged in home remedies (at-home exercises and oral and topical pain medications). The Board was justified in giving weight to the opinion of the employer’s medical expert.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. 

See Ciarolla v. Workers’ Comp. Appeal Bd. (Astrazeneca Pharms. LP), 239 A.3d 204 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 130.05.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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