Missouri: Claimant May Be Awarded TTD Benefits Even After Maximum Medical Improvement

Indicating that it was “not eliminating the concept of maximum medical improvement from the workers’ compensation lexicon,” the Supreme Court of Missouri held that while It was plausible, and likely probable, that the MMI date and the end of the rehabilitative process would coincide, thus, marking the end of the period when TTD benefits could be awarded, the commission was not required to accept MMI as a bright-line date to terminate TTD benefits when the commission was presented with evidence, as here, that a claimant had reached MMI yet sought additional treatment beyond that date in an attempt to restore himself or herself to a condition of health or normal activity by a process of medical rehabilitation. In such cases, the commission was required to make a factual determination as to whether the additional treatment was part of the rehabilitative process. Accordingly, the commission acted within its statutory authority when it found it was not bound by the MMI date offered by two medical experts and that the claimant was eligible for additional TTD benefits.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Greer v. Sysco Food Servs., 2015 Mo. LEXIS 248 (Dec. 8, 2015) [2015 Mo. LEXIS 248 (Dec. 8, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 80.03 [80.03]

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