Virginia: Perfunctory Award of Home Health Care to Spouse is Reversed

When considering whether a family member, in this case a spouse, can be paid for providing home health care services to an injured worker, it isn’t enough, said a Virginia appellate court, for the Commission to find that the care is medically necessary; the Commission must also determine that the services provided by the family member actually constituted such care and were not merely the sort of services provided by one family member for another. The court stressed that the dispositive question was whether, “under the circumstances of this case, the services performed by this spouse in attending to the needs of the disabled claimant qualify as ‘other necessary medical attention’ within the meaning of Code § 65.2-603” [quoting Warren Trucking Co. v. Chandler, 221 Va. 1108, 1114, 277 S.E.2d 488 (1981)].

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 Cumberland Hosp. & Ace Am. Ins. Co. v. Ross, 2019 Va. App. LEXIS 231 (Oct. 22, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.03.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see