Kansas: Court of Appeals Nixes Use of AMA Guides 6th Edition

Where a Kansas worker injured his shoulder in a 2013 work-related injury and, in March 2015, injured the same shoulder in another work-related accident and where, because of language in the AMA Guides, 6th Edition (which applied to injuries after 1/1/2015), examining physicians were forced to issue 0% impairment ratings in spite of the fact that both testified that such an impairment rating was medically inaccurate and insufficient, the state’s mandatory use of the AMA Guides, 6th Edition under Kan. Stat. Ann. § 44-510d was unconstitutional. The Court held that there could be no adequate substitute remedy for an employee's right to sue his employer for negligence and potentially recover an award at common law, when there is no remedy provided the employee under the Workers Compensation Act. Under the Court’s ruling, the AMA Guides, 4th Edition must be used. 

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 Pardo v. UPS, 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 30 (June 1, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 80.07.

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