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Healthcare workers spend their days caring for others, often at real risk to their own bodies. Lifting and repositioning patients, needlesticks, exposure to infectious disease, and even violence from patients make hospitals and nursing homes some of the most dangerous workplaces in Pennsylvania. If you were hurt on the job as a nurse, aide, or other healthcare worker in Bucks County, Pennsylvania law gives you the right to Bucks County workers’ compensation benefits. For over 34 years, Lerner, Steinberg & Associates has fought for injured workers across the county and helped them recover the medical care and lost wages they are owed.
Pennsylvania workers’ compensation covers nearly everyone who works in healthcare, no matter who caused the injury. Nurses, certified nursing assistants, aides, technicians, therapists, EMS personnel, home-health workers, and hospital support staff are all entitled to benefits when they are hurt doing their jobs. Your employer’s insurance must pay for your medical treatment and replace part of your lost wages while you recover.
Benefits include all reasonable and necessary medical care, wage loss benefits equal to about two-thirds of your average weekly wage, specific loss benefits for the permanent loss or loss of use of a body part, and death benefits for surviving family members. Healthcare injuries are often dismissed as “part of the job,” but the law does not see them that way. If your work caused or worsened your injury, you have a right to file.
Bucks County depends on a large healthcare workforce spread across its hospitals, nursing homes, long-term care and rehabilitation facilities, urgent-care centers, outpatient clinics, and home-health agencies. From Bensalem and Langhorne to Doylestown and Newtown, thousands of nurses and aides carry the physical demands of patient care every shift.
Nursing homes and long-term care facilities are among the most dangerous, because chronic short-staffing forces workers to lift and move patients alone. Hospital floors bring needlesticks, exposure, and violent patients, while home-health workers face hazards in uncontrolled environments with no help nearby. Whatever the setting, a serious injury can keep a healthcare worker off the job for months, and workers’ compensation is meant to cover that recovery.
Healthcare work causes a distinct set of injuries that other jobs rarely see. We handle claims for all of them, including the following.
Lifting, transferring, and repositioning patients causes herniated discs, torn shoulders, and chronic back injuries.
Accidental needlesticks risk exposure to bloodborne illness and require immediate testing and follow-up care.
Wet floors, spills, and cluttered, fast-moving units cause serious falls on hospital and nursing-home floors.
Combative or confused patients strike, bite, and grab staff, causing real and compensable injuries.
Exposure to bloodborne and airborne illness on the job can support an occupational disease claim.
Years of physical care work wear down the back, shoulders, and joints, a valid claim even with no single event.
The single biggest source of injury for healthcare workers is moving patients. Repeatedly lifting, turning, and transferring people who cannot support their own weight puts enormous strain on the back and shoulders, and short-staffing means it is often done alone and without the right equipment. The result is one of the highest rates of musculoskeletal injury of any profession in the country.
Employers and insurers sometimes argue these injuries are “degenerative” or pre-existing. Under Pennsylvania law, if your work aggravated or accelerated a prior condition, that aggravation is a compensable injury in its own right. If your injury came from the ordinary demands of lifting patients, our heavy lifting injury team knows how to prove it and defeat the pre-existing defense.
A needlestick or a serious exposure is frightening, and it is also a covered workplace injury. You are entitled to immediate testing, preventive treatment, and monitoring at your employer’s expense, whether or not you ultimately test positive. When an on-the-job exposure leads to a serious illness, it may support an occupational disease claim. Report every exposure immediately and keep a copy of the incident report, because prompt documentation is what protects these claims.
Workers’ compensation does not pay for pain and suffering. When a defective patient lift, a faulty sharps container, an unsafe condition at a facility owned by another company, or a staffing agency’s dangerous practices contributed to your injury, you may have a separate personal injury claim against that third party. Our attorneys review every healthcare case for that possibility so no source of compensation is missed.
Agency nurses, travel staff, and home-health workers are often labeled independent contractors to avoid paying for workers’ compensation. In Pennsylvania, that label does not automatically remove your right to benefits. The law looks at how the work was actually controlled and performed. Our attorneys challenge improper classifications that try to deny injured healthcare workers the coverage they have earned.
Pennsylvania sets firm deadlines, and missing even one can end your right to compensation. Three separate clocks matter in every case.
Because these deadlines move quickly, the safest step is to speak with a lawyer soon after your injury. You can review the state’s official program through the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, then reach out to our office for guidance.
For more than three decades, Mike Lerner and Ben Steinberg have handled workers’ compensation and injury cases for people across Bucks County, and they work on every healthcare case personally. You deal directly with an attorney, never a case file. They understand the specific injuries healthcare workers face and how employers try to write them off as ordinary wear and tear.
We pursue every avenue of recovery, including workers’ comp, third-party claims, and occupational disease claims, and we work on a contingency basis, so you owe no fee unless we win. If you were hurt on the job as a healthcare worker anywhere in Bucks County, contact our office for a free consultation and an honest review of your claim.
