One of the areas of workers’ compensation law that has recently been the subject of more than a few significant appellate-level cases has been the various provisions of Section 306(a.2) of the Workers’ Compensation Act dealing with Impairment Rating Evaluations, or IREs. As all regular practitioners are aware, the purpose of an IRE is to determine the percentage of “permanent impairment” an injured worker retains on that person’s receipt of 104 weeks of total disability benefits. Following a timely IRE, the status of the claimant’s benefits changes from total to partial in nature, without altering the amount of compensation owed, in the event an injured worker’s “whole person impairment” is less than 50 percent according to the American Medial Association’s “Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairments.”
The most significant case on the issue remains the Supreme Court’s decision in Gardner v. W.C.A.B. (Genesis Health Ventures) , which holds that an employer who fails to timely avail itself of the automatic reduction provided for in Section 306(a.2) of the act must seek a change in disability benefit status from total to partial through a “traditional administrative process.” This automatic reduction is realized when an employer requests the IRE within a 60-day window following the 104 weeks of total disability and files the self-administered LIBC-764 form (notice of change of workers’ compensation disability status).
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