30 Jan 2020

Iowa: Worker Entitled to Alternate Care in Spite of Refusal to Attend IME

An Iowa workers’ compensation claimant was entitled to alternate medical care under Iowa Code § 85.27, in spite of his refusal to attend an independent medical examination (IME) proposed by the employer to determine if the additional treatment was related to the original injury, held a state appellate court. The court stressed the two statutes, § 85.27 related to alternate care and Iowa Code § 85.39(1), which generally requires a claimant to attend an IME, served separate purposes. Here the employer had admitted the injury was compensable. The worker had established the need for alternate care under the statute. That he refused to attend the IME did not impact the request for alternate care.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the 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 Harris Steel Group, Inc. v. Botkin, 2020 Iowa App. LEXIS 40 (Jan. 9, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.10.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see