The practice of using cursory hands-off secops to create medical conflicts to deny claims or terminate benefits should be investigated in detail. They don't tell injured workers or their doctors what is actually needed to accept a claim , but play guessing games with the wording on causal relationship and medical evidence. They offer easy access to case files for the agencies, but claimants continually report they can't even get copies of their own files and medical reports in a timely manner. Many cannot even find out what doctors said to cut off their benefits without having to involve their Congressmen. This is an obvious impossibility without being able to routinely afford and use lawners, yet many thousands of claims depend on being able to do this expertly.
Doctors everywhere hate to take federal injury cases.
Once a claim has been denied, claimants find it difficult to get doctors to continue treatment or fill out the needed paperwork to rebut OWCP's own doctors regardless of how unqualified or incompetent OWCP doctors may be. They get harassed by agencies and by OWCP to return claimants to work, regardless of their own firsthand medical evidence and knowledge. Agencies commonly make verbal accommodations to light duty needs, and then force returning workers to aggravate the original injury or lose their job, then lose their claims, and lose their health insurance and family security with it. They wait months or years for treatment and income replacement, only to have OWCP finally approve it as it should have done long before. Due to OWCP delays, medical conditions get worse and the final cost goes up out of control.