If you are an injured worker and you’ve been disabled as a result of your accident, you are probably receiving temporary total disability (TTD) benefits.  Those benefits are intended to compensate you for the wages that you’ve lost because of your injury.  TTD benefits are, by far, the most common type of benefits that are paid to injured workers in Pennsylvania.

However, there is another type of benefit available to some injured workers.  “Specific loss benefits” are payable to injured workers who have had a body part amputated or completely lost the use of a body part.  The body part at issue could be as small as part of a finger or as large as an arm or leg.  Unlike TTD benefits, specific loss benefits are NOT intended to compensate an injured worker for wages that he/she has lost.  Instead, specific loss benefits are designed to compensate the injured worker for the loss of his/her body part.  As a result, an injured worker could be entitled to a substantial sum of benefits even if that injured worker missed only a minimal time from work – or even no work at all. 

Specific loss benefits are also payable to injured workers who, as a result of their injuries, have permanent, unsightly scars on their heads, necks, or faces.  In many cases, injured workers can receive benefits for scarring years after they were injured, recovered, and returned to work.  Many injured workers even receive specific loss benefits for scars resulting from surgeries, such as cervical fusions, that were necessitated by work injuries.