Florida: JCC May Not Order Employer to Pay Claimant’s Authorized Physician

A Florida appellate court held a judge of compensation claims had no authority to order an employer to pay the claimant's authorized physician, since reimbursement was handled under § 440.13(7), Fla. Stat., and all reimbursement disputes fell under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Department of Financial Services. The JCC also properly ordered the physician's continued authorization, as the only basis the employer offered to justify its doctor substitution was the physician's insistence on particular financial terms, and a JCC's award of medically necessary care under § 440.13 was to be made without regard to the possibility that a payment dispute might arise between the employer and the provider, although the employer could not be made to pay fees that exceeded the fee schedule.

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 Marine Max, Inc. v. Blair, 2019 Fla. App. LEXIS 3571 (Mar. 7, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.02.

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