Oregon adopts rules for denied conditions in comp

The Oregon Workers’ Compensation Division adopted temporary rules on the apportionment of impairment for injured workers when a denied condition is unrelated to a compensable injury, in response to a state Supreme Court case.

The high court in an April decision, Johnson v. SAIF Corp., determined that a worker is entitled to the full value of the total impairment — including a portion attributed to a denied condition — when a compensable injury is a material cause of a worker’s impairment.

To bring its rules into alignment with the court’s decision, the division revised a provision to clarify that apportionment for a denied condition is no longer allowed unless the denied condition is a combined condition denied for a major contributing cause or a combined condition denied entirely.

The WCD also clarified that a worker’s residual function capacity cannot be adjusted due to a denied condition without a denial of a combined condition for a major contributing cause of a condition in its entirety.

WorkCompCentral is a sister publication of Business Insurance. More stories here.