Medical chronology for workers' compensation claims

A workers' comp chronology has a job the others don't: cleanly separating treatment for the work injury from the claimant's unrelated medical history, because the insurer's defense will look for any pre-existing condition in the same body part to argue the current symptoms aren't compensable.

The first report of injury and the treating physician's initial note set the baseline. From there, the chronology needs every work-status determination (full duty, light duty, off work) with its date, because those notes are what wage-replacement benefits are calculated against, and every subsequent visit that documents whether the claimant is improving on the treatment plan.

Comp cases almost always involve an independent medical examination requested by the insurer, and the IME's findings frequently diverge from the treating physician's chronology. Having the treatment history laid out with page citations makes it straightforward to show where the IME disagrees with months of contemporaneous treating notes rather than a single point-in-time exam.