Permanent partial disability is just one way that you can attempt to resolve personal injury at a settlement or a hearing. According to Disability Secrets,ย permanent partial disability tries to compensateย an injured worker for the loss of a specific body part that they suffered the injury for. The court will look at things in percentages. For example, if you break your wrist, you might attempt to argue that under the theory of permanent partial disability, that hand and wrist is now 20% useless.ย
Every single percentage points of that body partย isย assigned a certain number of weeks of pay at your disability rate. At the end of the day, it comes down to simple calculations and math to determine, based upon your average weekly wage, your disability rate and the percentages that are appropriate for your disability, a lump sum that would be appropriate to compensate you after that injury. There is a variety of factors that the commission looks for under the statute for permanent partial disability. They look at the American Medical Association guidelines, which attempts to help guide them as far as what is the inappropriate percentage of loss of use for each body part.ย
Other important factors include your age, occupation, any evidence of a loss of earning capacity, the medical records themselves, and any evidence in those medical records of a disability. A good example will be if a doctor in the medical records indicates that you are unable to lift your right arm above shoulder length permanently because it is going to cause you too much pain. That is the kind of evidence of a disability that you should look for in attempting to argue for a higher award for permanent partial disability because it is objective evidence of a disability.ย
