[dvande04]

Hi,
    A year ago I fell at home and tore my meniscus in my left knee. I had surgery to trim it and found out that I also have grade 4 arthritis in that knee. They have tried "chicken" shots and steroid shots to relieve my pain but nothing helped. Pain meds don't really help either.
At my last appointment they took x-rays and discovered that I have hardly any cushioning left in the area where they performed the surgery. I've also developed quite a few bone spurs. They put me on restrictions for 5 days a week, 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. At that time I asked if they could make these restrictions permanent so the doctor put that I only had to come in "as needed". When they asked me about the "as needed" at work I told them it was permanent restriction and seemed to be fine with it. My employer had some other issues with my restrictions not being clear enough so I thought I'd ask the doctor to write that these restrictions are permanent. Now the doctor is saying that they can't put me on permanent work restrictions and that I would have to go through a disability insurer or take a functional capacity test. Is it true that they legally can't or are they trying to avoid liability for some reason? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Diane

[1171]

the doctor can write the same report for a home injury as well they can for a work injury.
generally a disability report has to have some standards or guidelines for describing/ranking the disability.
maybe your doctors don't believe they are qualified to apply disability standards.
there are many different rating systems, social security, workers compensation, general disability policy, etc.
An FCE can help quantify and measure function but only a physician can interprete the results as permanent work restrictions.
maybe your health insurer is not willing to pay for such a non-treatment item and you may have to pay for such an evaluation yourself.

[dvande04]

I forgot to say that my restrictions are also sit down only except to get supplies.