Is Interest Required in Worker’s Compensation Cases?
Discover the essentials of workers’ compensation interest payments: after 30 days, collect up to 1% per month on unpaid balances. Ensure fair compensation by promptly sending an interest bill upon receiving your work comp payment.
Illinois Worker’s Comp Interest Statute
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Transcript:
Recently, we had a question come up regarding worker’s compensation and interest that should be paid after a bill is sent from either the insurer or the employer. And here’s how that works for work comp cases, once you have sent in a bill that has all of the information that clearly indicates that these amounts are due, and there’s a long delay in the payment, whether it goes through the commission to determine the compensability, or anything along those lines, at the end of the day, here’s how that works.
If they have not paid you after 30 days, then that’s when the interest clock begins to tick. So when you send it in, it has everything that they need to be able to process those claims. 30 days have now passed, and that’s when the clock begins to tick. And you can actually collect interest up to 1% per month, that that is not paid. So if it happens to go three months, after you send the bill, then you would collect 2% or two months at 1% per month of that balance that was unpaid. Now, it’s not of the amount that you build, you gotta remember, it is still limited to the work comp fee schedule, that is critically important. But the interest that you would collect on the amount that you receive, and, and is due at 1% per month. So again, three months 2% would be what is owed.
Additionally, this is important, they’re actually supposed to pay you that interest within 30 days of you receiving that payment. So again, in the illustration that we’ve used, if you receive a check three months after you submitted a clear claim or a claim that had all of the information necessary to process three months after that point, it would be 2%. So four months after that initial sending of the of the clear claim, then you would be able to, they would they would be required to pay you that interest. So as soon as you receive that work comp payment, make sure you send them an interest bill, if they did not include the interest in that payment that they sent over to you send an interest bill for those amounts due, and again, don’t forget the first 30 days is free for the carrier for the employer. It’s only for those timeframes that are after that, and it is limited to 1% per month. Now if it’s a long delay, and we’re talking 13 months, then at that stage, they would actually owe you 12 months or 12% interest payments for that period and it would be due at the end of that 14 months. Hopefully, this information helps you out and we’ll catch you next week.
