In an emergency situation the employee must be sent to the nearest available physician or hospital, or the employees representative choice.
ELM 543.221 If non emergency treatment of an injury or illness is required the injured or ill employee may be treated by a physician of the employees choice.
Elm 543.222 when an employee doesn't select a physician the employee is referred to the USPS medical unit. The medical person who performs the treatment is not considered the employees initial choice of physician and an employee may select a physician at anytime following the treatment.
I write this article because too often employees are injured at work and even after my advise do not request to see their own physicians. In my opinion these people at the medical unit are not acting in the best interest of the employee but in the interest of the USPS and that is to get us back to work as soon as possible with disregard to our well being which these doctors are sworn to do.
I'm going to give one very simple example of something that just happen in our office. We had an employee fall down and get hurt, she went to medical unit where they took x rays and found nothing wrong, they said the x ray was negative.
Well after she visited with her own physician and took the same x ray they took at medical unit he found too cracked ribs. He couldn't understand how they could miss this. Well I could, they just wanted to get this girl back to work.
So please when ever your hurt on the job request too see your own doctor not the next day but the same day the injury occurs.
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