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Were You Denied Your Social Security Disability Claim? Get A Lawyer, File An Appeal

Get A Social Security Disabilty Lawyer For A Georgia Or Florida Appeal

Our lawyer can help you file an appeal at no cost to you. We have lawyers covering all of Florida and Georgia. Let one of our experienced disability lawyers help you get your disability benefits.

Should I hire a Social Security Disability Lawyer?

Of Course You Should.

Having an experienced lawyer on your side may make all the difference. And it costs you nothing.

If you have been denied on your Initial Claim, an experienced social security disability lawyer can help you with your claim for continuing and past due benefits . Free Legal Shield has experienced social security disability lawyers for you thru-out Florida and Georgia.

Claims Are Often Denied The First Time Around

Initial claims are typically denied 60 to 70 percent of the time, depending on the state in which you filed, so chances are you’ll end up in a hearing.

For further information, contact us now for a social security disability lawyer.

We are here 24hrs, 7days.

Georgia Workers Compensation Lawyers, Atlanta, Columbus, Albany

Georgia Workers compensation lawyers ready to help you with your on the job injury in Atlanta, Valdosta, Albany, Columbus, Augusta, Savannah, Macon, and all of Georgia. Contact our workers compensation free legal team today

What you need to know about Georgia Workers compensation

In Georgia, the State Board of Workers’ Compensation handles work injury cases and determines benefits. This agency covers all injuries that arise out of and in the course of your employment, from specific injuries like a back sprain to occupational disease injuries such as exposure to hazardous materials.

You do not have to prove that your employer was at fault to make a claim for benefits in Georgia. You do have to show that your injuries arose out of and in the course of your employment. In other words, if you got hurt while doing something work related and during work hours, you are typically covered. You are not covered if your injury was the result of your willful misconduct. For example, if you get into a fight at work and get injured as a result, you are not eligible for benefits. On the other hand, injuries resulting from a mistake are generally covered. In most cases you cannot sue your employer for negligence.

These are the main benefits that you should be eligible for under Georgia workers’ compensation law:

Payment of 100% of your medical bills. As long as you see an authorized physician, there are no out-of-pocket expenses for treatment that is reasonable and related to your job injury.

Temporary total disability. If you are unable to work, you can get 2/3 of your average weekly wage. If your injury is catastrophic, there is no limit on how long you can receive these benefits; if your injury is non-catastrophic, the limit is 400 weeks of benefits.

Temporary partial disability. This type of benefit is available if you can return to work but only perform a job where you make less money. You will receive 2/3 of the difference between your pre-injury wages and your post-injury wages, and you can receive these benefits for up to 350 weeks.

Permanent partial disability. This benefit is determined by a formula that includes several factors such as your percentage of impairment (determined by your doctor), as well as the type of injury you have.

In order to receive medical coverage, you are required to see a doctor chosen by your employer. A list of approved doctors should be posted in the workplace. If you go to a doctor not on the list, it is considered "unauthorized treatment" and the cost will not be covered. There is usually an exception if your injury required emergency treatment.

If you are looking for a workers’ compensation attorney in Georgia, we recommend that you hire a lawyer that focuses their practice almost exclusively on representing injured workers and one that has a history of success. Workers’ compensation lawyers get paid on a contingency basis, meaning they only get paid if your case is successful. If you don’t receive any benefits as a result, you pay nothing.

Attorney’s fees in Georgia work injury claims are limited to 25% of whatever your lawyer recovers for you (up to 400 weeks of benefits). If you recover $40,000, the attorney fee would be $10,000. However, if you get nothing, you would owe them nothing. Since attorney fees in Georgia workers’ compensation cases are fairly uniform, it won’t cost you more to go with the best lawyer you can find.

In Georgia, the law requires you to give your employer notice of your injury within 30 days of the accident. You should do this in writing as soon as possible so that there is no dispute as to when notice was given. If you fail to provide proper notice your case can be dismissed.

If you are having trouble getting benefits, or have any other dispute with the insurance company, it’s important to file a claim right away. There is a time limit on claims – one year from the date of the injury – or your case will be forever barred. The claim should be filed with the State Board of Workers’ Compensation.

Finally, please know that in Georgia a workers’ compensation claim is not a lawsuit, but rather a claim for benefits similar to filing for health insurance or long term disability. In almost every instance your law firm deals directly with the insurance company for your employer, not the employer themselves. Unlike health insurance coverage disputes, quick action can make a disputed job injury case more successful.

A good Georgia on the job injury attorney can guide you through the workers comp benefits process and be there in case you have questions or anything goes wrong. They can also prevent problems – such as unpaid benefits or denial of medical treatment. Contact our workers compensation free legal shield team today

Nursing Home Abuse, What you Need to Know, Nursing Home Abuse lawyers

Free Legal Shield Nursing Home Abuse lawyers are concerned about our seniors injured in Nursing Homes. Below are some guidelines to recognize nursing home Abuse. Your senior parents and grandparents must be protected,

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is any action with the intent to cause emotional or psychological injury to another.

Examples:

  • Threatening of any kind.
  • Belittling.
  • Humiliating.

Symptoms of Emotional Abuse:

  • Those typical of dementia- Mood swings, paranoia, biting, sucking, etc.
  • Behavior becomes withdrawn.
  • Suffering from anxiety that was not present before.

A Verbal Abuse Story:

Topsfield’s Masconomet Healthcare Center in Topsfield, Massachusetts was found in 2011 to have four employees who regularly engaged in verbally abusing nursing home residents.

Some of the verbal abuses included:

  • The recording of a dementia patient while taunting her.
  • A Nursing Assistant (N.A.) telling a resident she had slept with the resident’s husband and that the resident’s husband was leaving her.
  • A N.A. telling a resident that she would die in the facility.
  • Multiple N.A.s calling a resident fat; the same resident had a cookie shoved into her mouth while a N. A. called her a pig.
  • N.A.’s mocking a patient with a penile implant.

Physical Abuse
Physical abuse is any action with the intent to cause physical injury to another.

Examples:

  • Hitting or slapping.
  • Biting.
  • Not handling a patient with care when transferring them to or from a wheel chair or bed.

Symptoms of Physical Abuse:

  • Unexplained bruises, sprains, abrasions, skeletal fractures, and/or burns.
  • Bleeding and bruising in private areas.
  • Damaged undergarments.
  • Sudden behavior changes.
  • A visitor is forbidden to see a resident alone by the caretaker.
  • Obvious over-medication or under-medication.
  • New health problems.

A Physical Abuse Story:

A Cleveland, Ohio nursing home aide was caught on camera hitting a 78-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, throwing her into her bed and wheelchair, and shoving her face into the wall. In one instance, the aide struck her in front of another employee, who did nothing.

Neglect
Neglect is any action with the intent to deprive another of things necessary to their well-being.

Examples:

  • Not providing enough food or water.
  • Not ensuring proper hygiene.
  • Not ensuring cleaning medical tools.

Symptoms of Neglect:

  • Dehydration.
  • Malnourishment.
  • Under-medication.

A Neglect Story:

A resident of Evergreen Lakeport Healthcare has her call light ignored which resulted in her sitting in her own urine for hours.

A VA hospital in Pennsylvania was found to be neglecting its patients. One male patient’s toe was rotting and no one did anything until maggots began to pore out of a hole in his toe.

Sexual Abuse
Sexual abuse is any non-consensual contact of a sexual nature.

Examples:

  • Molestation.
  • Rape.

Symptoms of Sexual Abuse:

  • Bleeding and bruising around genitalia.
  • Damaged undergarments.
  • Sexually Transmitted Infection/s
  • Genitalia infections.

A Sexual Abuse Story:

At Southwood Nursing Center in Virginia, an elderly woman was sexually assaulted by another resident. The male resident was known to have been arrested 59 times; some of his arrests included sexual assault and child molestation. He used a wheel chair to block the door so no one would disturb him.

Financial Exploitation
Financial Exploitation is the taking of another’s monetary or material assets with or without their permission, or through coercion.

Examples

  • Stealing of money or possessions.
  • Coercing a resident to sign over his/her financial responsibilities.
  • Stealing of social security checks.

Symptoms of Financial Exploitation:

  • Money withdrawals made that a resident could not have made.
  • Sudden changes to a resident’s legal documents.
  • No longer receiving pension or social security checks.
  • The resident no longer has control over his/her financial matters.

A Financial Exploitation Story:

A Chicago nursing home patient had over $4,000 electronically withdrawn from her banking account by a nursing home staff member. The staff member was only caught after the resident’s family noticed withdraws from the resident’s account over a period of months.

New Allowances for Social Security Disability Claims, Social Security Disability Lawyers

Social Security Disability lawyers of Florida and Georgia Announce new Disease Status for your Social Security Disability Claims Today

Social Security, announced 52 new Compassionate Allowances conditions, primarily involving neurological disorders, cancers and rare diseases. According to Social Security, the Compassionate Allowances program fast-tracks disability decisions to ensure that Americans with the most serious disabilities receive their benefit decisions within days instead of months or years. Commissioner Astrue made the announcement during his remarks at the World Orphan Drug Congress near Washington, D.C.

“Social Security will continue to work with the medical community and patient organizations to add more conditions,” Commissioner Astrue said. “With our Compassionate Allowances program, we quickly approved disability benefits for nearly 61,000 people with severe disabilities in the past fiscal year, and nearly 173,000 applications since the program began.”

The Compassionate Allowances initiative identifies claims where the nature of the applicant’s disease or condition clearly meets the statutory standard for disability. With the help of sophisticated new information technology, the agency can quickly identify potential Compassionate Allowances and then quickly make decisions.

Social Security launched the Compassionate Allowances program in 2008 with a list of 50 diseases and conditions. The announcement of 52 new conditions, effective in August, will increase the total number of Compassionate Allowances conditions to 165. The conditions include certain cancers, adult brain disorders, a number of rare genetic disorders of children, early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, immune system conditions, and other disorders. In his speech that opened the Congress, Commissioner Astrue thanked the National Institutes of Health for research they conducted which helped identify many of the conditions added to the list.

The agency also is improving its online disability application process, which is already substantially shorter than the standard paper application. Starting April 21, 2012, adults who file for benefits online will have the option to electronically sign and submit their Authorization to Disclose Information to the Social Security Administration (Form SSA-827). This improvement allows applicants to complete disability applications in a streamlined online session, rather than printing, signing, and mailing paper authorization forms to Social Security offices.

In March, Social Security approved eight research projects through its Disability Determination Process Small Grant Program. This new program aims to improve the disability process through innovative research by graduate students focusing on topics such as the Compassionate Allowances program, Wounded Warriors initiative, homelessness and SSI, and disability enrollment issues.

New Compassionate Allowances Conditions

  • Aicardi-Goutieres Syndrome
  • Alobar Holoprosencephaly
  • Alpers Disease
  • Alpha Mannosidosis
  • Carcinoma of Unknown Primary Site
  • Cerebrotendinous Xanthomatosis
  • Child Neuroblastoma
  • Child Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
  • Chondrosarcoma with multimodal therapy
  • Cornelia de Lange Syndrome-Classic Form
  • Ewings Sarcoma
  • Follicular Dendritic Cell Sarcoma with metastases
  • Fucosidosis – Type 1
  • Galactosialidosis – Early Infantile Type
  • Glioma Grade III and IV
  • Hallervorden-Spatz Disease
  • Hepatoblastoma
  • Histiocytosis
  • Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome
  • Hydranencephaly
  • Hypocomplementemic Urticarial Vasculitis
  • Hypophosphatasia Perinatal lethal Form
  • I Cell disease
  • Infantile Free Sialic Acid Storage Disease
  • Juvenile Onset Huntington Disease
  • Kufs Disease Type A and B
  • Lissencephaly
  • Lymphomatoid Granulomatosis Grade III
  • Malignant Brain Stem Gliomas – Childhood
  • Malignant Melanoma with metastases
  • Mastocytosis Type IV
  • Medulloblastoma with metastasis
  • Merkel Cell Carcinoma with metastases
  • Myocolonic Epilepsy and Ragged Red Fibers Syndrome
  • Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis
  • Obliterative Bronchiolitis
  • Ohtahara Syndrome
  • Orthochromatic Leukodystrophy with Pigmented Glia
  • Pearson Syndrome
  • Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease-Classic Form
  • Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease-Connatal Form
  • Peripheral Nerve Cancer – metastatic or recurrent
  • Perry Syndrome
  • Rhabdomyosarcoma
  • Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata
  • Schindler Disease Type 1
  • Smith Lemli Opitz Syndrome
  • Spinal Nerve Root Cancer- metastatic or recurrent
  • Stiff Person Syndrome
  • Tabes Dorsalis
  • Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome
  • Xeroderma Pigmentosum