GQ Corner
Q. I have received a claim from an employer that tells me that their employee was traveling abroad when they fell off a mobile scooter and is in a hospital overseas needing abdominal surgery from internal bleeding. Date of injury 11/1/21. Is there coverage for the claimant in another country? What specific questions do I need to address with the employer to confirm coverage?
A. It would not really be up to the employer as to whether there is coverage. It would be up to the terms of the workers’ compensation policy. Injuries are not non-compensable simply because they were sustained outside of the US. Of course, there are some companies that do a lot of overseas work that have separate workers’ compensation policies for those claims but those are usually in the petroleum industry. That said, there certainly could be a defense to compensability depending upon what the employee was doing at the time of the injury, so you will want to investigate that.
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