Opinion ID: 1179569
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the true legal attributes of the application under review

Text: The worker asserts that the expenses of transplant procedure were correctly found, in the order on review, to have been included within the sweep of health services directed to be furnished by the terms of the October 20 award, inasmuch as that order was treated below by the parties as one which authorized continuing postaward medical treatment. We reject this argument as unfounded and unsound. A permanent disability award constitutes a solemn adjudication that the worker's healing period has come to an end and his condition or state of health has reached the very optimum that is then medically attainable. [6] The law assumes that a condition of health, once adjudged to be permanent, is stationary. Stationary conditions generally require no medical care or maintenance. The moment permanent disability begins, the right to receive medical treatment ceases by operation of law except, of course, for certain limited, tightly structured and explicitly authorized situations. [7] Permanent disability, partial or total, is presumed to continue until recurrence of temporary disability is established. [8] In contrast, temporary disability, once shown, is not presumed to extend for any length of time; its duration must be proved from the beginning to its very end. [9] Once adjudged to have permanent disability, a worker is entitled to medical attention only upon establishing recurrence of the postaward healing period in a reopening proceeding under 85 O.S. 1981 § 28. [10] The October 20 award for permanent disability cannot serve as authority for medical treatment beyond its date. The worker's postaward quest for additional medical care  now on review  is in law but a § 28 reopening claim, which must be based on a changed condition that necessitates heart transplant surgery. In that proceeding the worker was required to establish an after-occurring (postaward) need for the requested medical procedure. The § 28 reopening relief cannot be employed to correct either mistakes or deficiencies in a prior award or order. [11]
The claimant's postaward request for organ substitution surgery may not be treated as but a definitional clarification of the October 20 award, insofar as the latter authorizes medical services. This case differs from Orrick Stone Company v. Jeffries, [12] where a postaward proceeding for determination of services that were due was sanctioned. We do not deal here with a stationary paraplegic or quadriplegic patient found to require day-to-day, long-term maintenance care. The Orrick Stone category of health or nursing service claims affordable under § 14 embraces day-to-day maintenance care. These services do not call for an alteration or improvement of a worker's physical condition. Recurrence of temporary disability is not required for an order directing the employer's provision of day-to-day maintenance care. The law authorizes that type of health services without a need for showing a postaward change of conditions. Because this postaward claim cannot be regarded as one for day-to-day maintenance care but is rather to be treated as one for an invasive surgical procedure designed to produce an anatomical change, it must meet the same standards of proof as those which are applicable to a § 28 reopening proceeding for additional medical services on recurrence of an injured worker's healing period. [13]