It doesn't happen in a lot of workers' compensation cases in Illinois, but in some where a worker has a very serious injury they can be sent temporarily to a nursing home or rehab facility to aid in their recovery.

You don't picture a nursing home as being filled with people who months before were healthy laborers, but it happens. Within nursing homes patients can have all sorts of injuries and physical issues. One that you need to on the look out for if you are in a nursing home or rehab facility are bedsores.

Bedsores are also called pressure ulcers and decubitus ulcers. They are skin injuries that come from pressure to the skin. Stage one bedsores are relatively minor and can look like a cut that needs to be healed. A stage 3 or 4 bedsore is much more serious and can literally cause your bone to be exposed and can potentially kill you.

These injuries happen a lot at these facilities because the patients there have conditions that limit their ability to change positions and spend a lot of time in a bed or chair. They are most often found on your tailbone, back, hips, heels and shoulder blades.

Bedsores are caused by pressure and friction and can be made worse by medical conditions including poor blood flow and immobility.

Now you are at a work comp blog site, so the question is what do you need to know if you or a loved one gets a pressure sore at a rehab facility after having been injured on the job in Illinois? Here are three important things to know.

1. You may have a lawsuit against the facility where this occurred. If the sore gets to stage three or worse, it's a sign that the medical providers did not properly monitor you.
2. If this happened after a work injury, it's likely part of your work comp case. That means all of the bills related to this problem should be covered.
3. The sad reality is that bedsores are more common at poorly run facilities. It happens often due to them not checking the skin of their patients. The good news if you are injured on the job in IL is that you get to choose your own medical providers. That means you don't have to go to a crummy facility because the insurance company wants to send you there to save a few bucks. You can and should choose the best place possible for your treatment to prevent problems like this from happening.

These are unusual and probably happen in less than 20 work comp cases a year. As a result it's important to hire an attorney who understands how serious these issues are.

By Mike Helfand

Courtesy of Illinois Workers Compensation Law Blog

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