What Are Vocational Rehabilitation Benefits?

After a workplace injury in Maryland, you may be eligible to obtain workers’ compensation benefits. Whether or not you are eligible to receive benefits will depend upon whether you can show that your injury arose out of your employment and occurred in the course of your employment. If you can meet those requirements — and a workers’ compensation attorney Maryland can help — then you can be eligible for benefits. Once you are approved for workers’ compensation benefits in Maryland, you will receive medical coverage for doctor’s appointments, medication, and even surgical procedures that are necessary to treat your workplace injury. Injured employees also receive wage-loss or wage-replacement benefits, which pay a portion of their earnings prior to the injury.

When employees sustain severe injuries that result in temporary partial or total, or permanent partial or total, disabilities, then they can also be eligible for disability benefits for a period of time depending on the nature of the injury. When a worker becomes disabled, they also may be eligible for vocational rehabilitation benefits. What are these benefits and how do they work? Our Maryland workers’ compensation lawyer can explain in more detail.

What Are Vocational Rehabilitation Benefits? 

Vocational rehabilitation benefits can include many different things under Maryland Labor and Employment Code Section 9-670. Those benefits include the following:

• Coordination of medical services;
• Vocational assessment;
• Vocational evaluation;
• Vocational counseling;
• Vocational rehabilitation plan development;
• Vocational rehabilitation plan monitoring;
• Vocational rehabilitation training;
• Job development; and
• Job placement.

The aim of these benefits is to “enable a disabled covered employee, as soon as practical, to secure suitable gainful employment.” Maryland law defines “suitable gainful employment” to mean “employment, including self-employment, that restores the disabled covered employee, to the extent possible, to the level of support at the time of” their accidental personal injury or disablement from an occupational disease.

In short, the aim of these benefits is to help disabled employees return to work, even if they cannot return to the same type of job they did prior to their workplace injury or diagnosis with an occupational disease.

Who Can Get Vocational Rehabilitation Benefits? 

Under Maryland law, a “disabled covered employee is entitled to vocational rehabilitation services.” The Maryland Labor and Employment Code defines disabled to mean “rendered unable as the result of an accidental personal injury or an occupational disease to perform work for which the personal was previously qualified.”

If you were injured at work, have met the eligibility requirements for Maryland workers’ compensation benefits, and you meet this definition of “disabled,” you can go through a vocational assessment, after which you will be entitled to

Contact Our Maryland Workers’ Compensation Attorneys for Assistance 

If you suffered a workplace injury that resulted in you becoming disabled, you could be eligible for a range of workers’ compensation benefits that include vocational rehabilitation benefits. To find out more, it is important to seek advice from one of the experienced Maryland workers’ compensation lawyers at the Law Offices of Steinhardt, Siskind and Lieberman, LLC as soon as possible. Contact our firm today to find out more about how we can help with your workers’ compensation case.

Source:

law.justia.com/codes/maryland/labor-and-employment/title-9/subtitle-6/part-xi/