After you have filed your 801 form, your employer must do certain things:
Within five days of knowledge of your claim, your employer must turn your claim form into the insurance company. If you have doubts, check out our article about how to file your claim, and what you can do to make sure that the insurance company actually receives your claim.
When does the employer know about your claim? It seems straightforward, but knowledge about the claim is when a supervisor or owner is told about the claim, or based on all the circumstances, your employer knows that there is going to be a claim.
If you only require first aid, the employer does not have to report the claim. However, it needs to maintain a record of any first aid rendered, just in case first aid is not enough to take care of an on the job injury. Even if you only receive first aid, you can still file an 801 form. If you do, then the employer has to report the claim to the insurance company.
Once in awhile, we have a client come in with this story:
The client injures his low back, and reports the claim to his boss. The boss or company owner declines to take a claim, but offers to pay for medical care. The employee says fine, but then when things do not get better in a week or two, there is tension, and things often lead to bad blood.
The employer is shirking its reporting responsibility, and if it happens enough, the Oregon Workers Compensation Division will penalize the employer.
It is really not a good idea to take an offer from your employer to pay for your treatment and not file the claim. Why? Because often times, the injury is more serious than a couple of weeks of treatment, and when you take the formal route and file the claim, there may not be strong evidence of the injury in the first place.
