The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

270 | the essential guide to family and medical leave
it occurs at the workplace during normal work hours; while the employee
is traveling for business; or while the employee is attending a required work
function, such as a company picnic or team-building event.
If an employee’s serious health condition is due to a work-related injury
or illness, both the FMLA and workers’ comp might apply. In this situation,
the employee would be entitled to up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected
leave under the FMLA, and to partial wage replacement, reimbursement for
medical bills, and perhaps some retraining or occupational therapy under
workers’ comp.
Workers’ Comp Medical Inquiries
As explained in Chapter 8, employers have very limited rights to request
medical information under the FMLA. The employer may require the employee
to submit a medical certification from a health care provider, giving
some basic facts about the serious health condition that necessitates leave.
However, the employer may not request additional information or contact
the health care provider directly. Although the employer can, with the
employee’s consent, have its own health care provider contact the employee’s
health care provider, this is only for the limited purpose of clarifying and
authenticating the information on the medical certification form.
The workers’ compensation statutes of most states allow quite a bit more
contact between employers and health care providers. If an employee is
on FMLA leave for a workers’ comp injury, and the state’s workers’ comp
law allows direct contact between the employer and the employee’s health
care provider, the FMLA doesn’t prohibit that contact. In other words, the
employer can still communicate with the health care provider in any way the
workers’ comp statute allows.