Avoiding Workers’ Comp Surveillance and Strategies to Protect Your Claim

Your actions after filing for workers’ compensation in Pennsylvania may put your claim at risk. An insurer can initiate numerous types of workers’ comp surveillance to determine if a claim is legitimate, exaggerated, or falsified. Staying vigilant of insurance companies’ strategies to monitor your health and the extent of your injuries is imperative to protecting your claim.

At Munley Law, a Pennsylvania workers’ compensation lawyer can help you file a claim or appeal to avoid errors that prevent or stall the claim approval process. The attorney you partner with can offer proven strategies to safeguard your claim from workers’ comp private investigator tactics. Protecting workers’ compensation is an ongoing process even after receiving approval.

Is Every Workers’ Comp Case Subject to Workers’ Compensation Surveillance?

Not every workers’ compensation claim leads to surveillance. However, workplace injuries, whether legitimate or fraudulent, are costly. Pennsylvania workplace injury statistics indicate insurers dispersed $2.9 billion in wage and medical benefits statewide. Workers’ comp private investigators may investigate your case if:

• Discrepancies exist between your claim and the information a physician provides about your injury

• An employer or insurer suspects you are fabricating an injury

• You work multiple jobs and continue your duties in other positions

• Random surveillance is part of the insurance company’s routine policy

Never confront or question workers’ comp private investigators. Speak with a Pennsylvania workers’ comp attorney immediately to retain legal representation, and protect against illegal evidence collection methods. Call us for a free consultation — we will answer all of your workers’ comp questions.

What Are Common Workers’ Comp Private Investigator Tactics?

Our daily lives are often public knowledge. We document our activities online or through health and location tracking devices that publicly post our goals and achievements. Personal activity monitoring by private investigators has become simpler. The payoff from insurance fraud investigations may be financially beneficial for insurers. Workers’ comp private investigators may use these tactics for surveillance.

Social Media Monitoring

Posts, tags, and mentions on a social media platform are an easily accessible tool to monitor daily activities and engagement. Online monitoring is one of the most convenient workers’ comp private investigator tactics. Social media engagement provides insight into your daily activities to anyone with access to your information. Checking in at places like the gym, at a bar, on a trail, or at any event may suggest your injuries are not as impactful as you express in a claim.

Daily Routine Monitoring

How you proceed through the day can indicate the severity of an injury. Daily activity monitoring may include workers’ comp private investigators watching how you physically move in and out of your home, whether you drive and for how long, and whether you use mobility aids and equipment. Continuing your daily chores or commitments, such as cutting the grass, washing a vehicle, or attending a child’s sporting events can be red flags that a workers’ comp claim is exaggerated. Tracking how much time you spend outside or away from home during your daily routine may be a part of workers’ comp surveillance.

Video Surveillance or Photographs

Workers’ comp private investigators only need a cell phone to video you in public places. A recording or picture of you shopping, lifting heavy objects or grocery bags into a cart or vehicle, walking a dog, or tossing a ball in the park may contradict the information you have provided about your injury, or they may serve as “proof” that your limitations do not exist.

Interviews With Family, Friends, and Acquaintances

Interviews may not always occur in a question-and-answer form. Workers comp private investigators may initiate casual conversations in public places, asking passive questions to gain information about you in a non-direct manner.

How Do I Protect Against Workers’ Comp Surveillance?

Protecting against workers’ comp investigator tactics requires diligence around your home and in public spaces. Closely following your doctor’s orders and care plan is paramount to protecting workers’ compensation benefits. Hiring the right workplace injury attorney is pivotal to defending against surveillance tactics. Take these additional steps to avoid surveillance tactics an investigator may use against you.

Limit Social Media Activity

Limit or refrain from posts, checks-in, or allowing tags on social media. If not posting is too challenging, stay off social apps. Even social media privacy settings at the strictest level may not protect against surveillance. After receiving workers’ compensation benefits, online displays portraying activity levels contradicting an injury’s severity can impact your compensation.

Assess Your Daily Activity Level

Performing everyday chores and activities after suffering an injury at work may feel like a victory. However, surveillance indicating increasing or extended activity levels may significantly impact your workers’ compensation benefits. Keep your activities in line with the guidelines a physician provides.

Ask Friends and Family to Respect Your Privacy

Talking with the people you know about the impact of sharing information about you may be beneficial if workers’ comp private investigators question them. Bring awareness to the potential damage a casual conversation or comment may have on your claim. Request that friends and family not tag you on social media to protect your privacy.

Their motives may be innocent. However, their comments, tags, or statements about you can be costly. A denial of your workers’ compensation claim may occur, or it may be necessary to file an appeal with the Appeal Board.

Personally Document Your Injury

Advocating for yourself is the first step in protecting a claim from insurance fraud investigations. Keep all original medical documentation about your injury. Medical privacy laws only require you to share documentation relating to the injury you file a claim for with the insurance company, not your entire medical history.

Keep a daily diary of your symptoms and how the injury impacts you. Having specific examples provides more substantial evidence for a workers’ comp claim. Workers’ comp private investigators strive to save insurance companies money by identifying inconsistent or fraudulent claims. Be consistent in your actions, documentation, and medical treatment when applying for workers’ compensation.

When Might Surveillance Begin After Filing for Workers’ Comp?

The insurance company may begin working with workers’ comp private investigators and start immediate surveillance when they receive your claim. Filing a previous claim or experiencing severe injuries may be a trigger that initiates surveillance tactics in a workers’ comp claim. Surveillance can be ongoing or occur over time when a claim may result in significant benefits.

Using the details of a claim, investigators may document your public activities through surveillance that are counter to your doctor’s recommended restrictions and limitations. An insurer can use surveillance data to pinpoint inconsistencies between the limitations you report and what you can physically do.

Can I Tell If I am Under Surveillance by a Workers’ Comp Investigator?

Workers’ comp private investigator tactics are not always overt. Investigators often fly under the radar to survey without detection. The goal is to catch you performing activities contrary to your claim or a doctor’s orders. You may notice unfamiliar cars parked near your residence or following you when you leave home.

Always limit public activities to demonstrate compliance with your medical guidelines. Limiting conversation about a work-related injury, even with friends and family, is recommended. It is best to only discuss your injuries with your doctor, a mental health professional, or a spouse or partner. Assuming workers’ comp private investigators are surveilling you can be beneficial and protect your claim.

Is It Legal For the Insurance Company to Surveil Me After I File a Claim?

Workers’ comp private investigators may legally conduct surveillance on your public activities. However, privacy laws and the second restatement of torts, such as intrusion on seclusion, protect against intentional and unreasonable physical or electronic surveillance of someone in a private space.

Surveillance must not infringe upon an individual’s solitude or be highly offensive when there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example, videoing you through a window in your home may violate your constitutional rights. In contrast, video surveillance at a gym or recording in a public space in a gym may be permissible.

Our Pennsylvania workers’ comp lawyers have extensive experience protecting clients against unlawful surveillance. Contact law enforcement anytime if you feel unsafe due to suspected surveillance.

What Can I Do While On Workers’ Compensation?

Your physician or a doctor hired by the insurance company to perform independent medical examinations (IME) will provide guidelines and documentation of legitimate activities to outline what is safe to do in your current state of health. A physician may also request a functional capacity evaluation to determine your ability to perform specific tasks as they relate to your job duties or to support a workers’ comp claim. Stay within the activity guidelines that an IME establishes or your physician recommends.

If you participate in return-to-work programs, closely follow the policy responsibilities for injured employees. Ultimately, what to do while on workers’ compensation in Pennsylvania is specific to your injury and treatment.

Protect Your Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Claim

Your economic stability after suffering a workplace accident in Pennsylvania may depend on receiving workers’ compensation. Surveillance allows the insurance company to identify fraudulent claims or reduce the amount of compensation you receive for a legitimate claim.

Learn more about workers’ comp private investigator tactics. Contact a workers’ compensation lawyer in Pennsylvania at Munley Law to protect your claim.