If you have sustained an injury in the course of your employment, you may have an entitlement to weekly payments, medical expenses and may be lump sum compensation under the Workers Compensation scheme in New South Wales.
What is lump sum compensation?
A claim for lump sum compensation requires an assessment of your injuries by a medico-legal doctor who will provide an opinion as to your level of whole person impairment (or WPI). This is expressed as a percentage of impairment.
For all lump sum claims made after 19 June 2012, your physical injuries must be assessed at 11% or more and psychological injuries at 15% or more.
If your primary injury is physical in nature, you cannot make a claim for lump sum for consequential or secondary psychological injuries i.e., stress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of your physical injuries.
If your primary injury is psychological in nature and you sustained physical injuries to one or more body parts in the same workplace accident, then your degree of impairment for psychological injury will be assessed separately to the degree of impairment as a result of your physical injuries. You are entitled to receive lump sum compensation for impairment as a result of whichever (psychological or physical) injury results in the greater amount of compensation.
Some injured workers, including NSW Police Officers, NSW Ambulance Officers and NSW Firefighters are able to access lump sum compensation for physical injuries with as little as a 1% WPI.
How often can you claim lump sum compensation for physical and psychological injury?
If you sustained an injury after this date, you are only entitled to make one claim for lump sum.
If your work injury occurred prior to 19 June 2012 and you claimed lump sum compensation prior to 19 June 2012, you can bring one further claim for deterioration of the same injury after 19 June 2012.
How often can you claim lump sum compensation for hearing loss?
If you have sustained hearing loss as a result of your employment, you can bring more than one claim for impairment. Dependent on the circumstances, each claim will be considered a new claim and not a deterioration or aggravation, regardless of the injury happening before 2002 or after 19 June 2012, and therefore must reach the impairment threshold of 11% (20.5% binary hearing loss) or more.
Can you claim compensation for pain and suffering besides lump sum compensation?
Generally, no. The amendments made to the New South Wales Workers Compenstion Act New South Wales Workers Compensation Act 1987 in 2012 abolished compensation for pain and suffering.
However, some injured workers, including NSW Police Officers, NSW Ambulance Officers and NSW Firefighters are still able to access compensation for pain and suffering. This is only possible if their impairment is assessed at more than 10% WPI.
How can Stacks Goudkamp lawyers help you?
Please reach out to our expert workers compensation lawyers at Stacks Goudkamp, who will not only advise you regarding your workers compensation entitlements and the workers compensation scheme but will also arrange for your whole person impairment to be assessed by an independent medical examiner.
