The Workers’ Compensation Award Order in Virginia: What Your “Award Letter” Actually Does
If the insurer accepts your claim and provides an Award Agreement form, or if a deputy commissioner awards your case after an evidentiary hearing, you will receive a short document from the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission. Injured workers call it the Award Letter. Adjusters, attorneys, and the Commission call it an Award Order. It is the same document, and until you settle, it is the most important piece of paper in your case.
This page explains what the order says, the three kinds of awards the Commission enters, how you get one, and the power it gives you that an adjuster’s promise to pay benefits never will.
If the insurer has sent you an unsigned form and you are deciding whether to sign it, you want to read the Award Agreement form page instead. This page starts after the parties sign and file the document and the Commission approves the agreement.
Why the Award Order is the most important document in your case
In my opinion, the Virginia workers’ comp system is stacked against employees. You have little leverage against employers: you cannot recover money damages for pain and suffering from a work injury, you cannot ask a jury (or a judge) to decide what your case is worth, and the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act limits how long many of you can receive wage loss payments.
Having an Award Letter is the only way to regain some of that leverage. Without it, you have to hope the claim adjuster does the right thing, authorizes medical treatment for the work injury, and sends temporary total disability (TTD) on time. But once you have it, your employer and its insurance carrier must follow the Award Order and can break it only in specific circumstances and with the Commission’s permission. Every section below explains this letter’s importance to you.
What an Award Order says
An Award Letter is an award of workers’ compensation benefits entered by the Commission. Under Virginia Code § 65.2-701, an award is binding and “for all purposes enforceable” under § 65.2-710. This second part, enforceability, means that if the employer and insurer fail to fulfill their obligations under the award, you can docket the award in circuit court and enforce it like any other judgment.
An Award Order is similar to a private contract, but not quite. Unlike contracts, which are usually fixed and enforced through breach-of-contract lawsuits, a workers’ comp Award Letter remains under the Commission’s jurisdiction. It can be modified – but only through the Commission.
Usually the Award Order is one page, sometimes running to two pages. It states:
- The date of the Award Order. This date matters because it sets the deadline for either party to request review by the Commission.
- The benefits you will receive: lifetime medical, temporary total disability, temporary partial disability, permanent total disability, or permanent partial disability (PPD).
- If the order awards compensation for wage loss, the weekly compensation rate at which you will receive payment. It will also list when wage loss benefits begin and, for a closed period, when they end. An open award has no end date.
- If the order awards compensation for PPD, the percentage impairment rating and the length of time you will receive these payments.
- The body parts, injuries, and occupational diseases for which the insurer must provide lifetime medical care. Some orders say “all causally related body parts” instead of listing them. If yours does, the award may cover every injury and condition listed on your claim form – a potential windfall if, like me, you claim every injury and condition mentioned in the medical reports. This Commission practice led to litigation, and I have not seen the term “all causally related body parts” used in more than a year.
- How long you have to request review if you dispute any part of the letter – typically 30 days.
Read every line of the Award Letter. It is central to every future dispute about your benefits.
The three types of Award Orders in workers’ compensation
The workers’ comp system uses acronyms and phrases you’ve probably never heard of. Here are three more. Each describes a specific type of Award Letter an injured worker can receive.
Medical Only Award Order. This order states that your employer and its insurer are responsible for reasonable, necessary, and authorized medical treatment causally related to your on-the-job injury. It does not provide wage loss payments. Many claims start here, particularly when you returned to work quickly – either full duty or with restrictions but no wage loss. Do not treat it as a lesser award. A medical-only award establishes that the accident was compensable, and lifetime medical is often worth more than the wage claim.
Open Award Order. An open award states that your employer and its insurer must pay you weekly benefits on an ongoing basis, with no end date. An open award for temporary total disability is the strongest position for an injured worker in this system because the carrier cannot end this award unilaterally. The only exits are an Employer’s Application for Hearing, covered below, or the exhaustion of 500 weeks of cumulative indemnity benefits.
Closed Award Order. A closed award states that the insurer must pay you for a specific period, with a beginning and end date. An award of permanent partial disability is also a closed award, since it pays a fixed number of weeks for a scheduled body part.
A serious case usually collects several of these over its life, often in this order: medical only, then open as you go out of work, then closed as you return, then a PPD award at maximum medical improvement (MMI). Each one is a separate order. Keep all of them.
How you get an Award Order
You have two routes to an Award Letter: by agreement with the employer or insurer, or by winning at a workers’ compensation hearing.
By agreement. The easy way to an Award Order. You can use this path if the insurer accepts your claim and sends you an Award Agreement form (or, sometimes, a document called a Stipulated Order). Both sides sign the document, one side files it, and then the Commission reviews it before entering the order. Usually the order memorializes what the parties agreed to in the Award Agreement or proposed Stipulated Order; however, exceptions occur when the parties agree to certain benefits or payment rates that violate the Workers’ Compensation Act or the Commission’s Rules. The Award Agreement page explains what to check before you sign.
By hearing. The hard way to an Award Letter. If the insurer denies any part of your claim, you can ask the Commission to set your claim for an evidentiary hearing before a deputy commissioner. The deputy commissioner hears and reviews the evidence before issuing a written opinion. That opinion includes the award. An Award Order entered after a hearing differs from one entered based on the parties’ agreement because its findings of fact may bind both parties on appeal.
The Commission favors the first route. It offers free issue and settlement mediation services to help the parties avoid a trial. But sometimes you have to litigate and try the case to get the proper Award Order.
What power the Award Order gives you
It stops the insurer from ending your benefits arbitrarily.
You are at the insurer’s mercy if you do not have an Award Letter. No matter how smoothly your claim has gone – benefit checks on time, no delay in the authorization of medical treatment – it can come to a halt if you don’t have an Award Order.
On the other hand, the insurer cannot stop your benefits once you have an award, unless it files an Employer’s Application for Hearing and the Commission finds probable cause to accept the application and docket it for a hearing. Before the Commission will docket the application, the insurer must give a specific reason and provide supporting documentation, and you have 15 days to file an objection.
From the defense side, this is why an adjuster schedules a functional capacity evaluation (FCE) or an independent medical examination (IME), starts vocational rehabilitation services, or urges your employer to accommodate your restrictions. Each of these items potentially supports an application to stop your benefits. So while the Award Order doesn’t stop the insurer from trying to lower your case’s value, it puts a hurdle before the insurance company.
It gives you enforcement remedies.
If you are under an open award for temporary total disability and a weekly payment is more than two weeks late, the insurer owes a 20 percent penalty on the late amount under § 65.2-524. That is extra money in your pocket, and it is one of the few places in the Act where the insurer must pay for delay. My page on late workers’ compensation checks covers how to claim the penalty.
If the insurer refuses to pay for treatment recommended by the authorized treating physician you chose from the panel of doctors or received a referral to, you use the medical award to compel authorization of the treatment and compel payment. The medical award does not give the insurance carrier the discretion to choose what it wants to cover. It is a court order to pay for reasonable, necessary, and causally related care provided by or at the direction of an authorized treating physician. When the insurer denies medical treatment for your work injury, the Commission decides if that is right, not the adjuster.
You can enforce it like a court judgment.
You can docket an unpaid award in circuit court and enforce it like any other judgment. In practice, the penalty and fee provisions usually address the insurer’s noncompliance. Still, the threat of using the unpaid award to obtain a writ to take goods from the employer to cover the unpaid amount is real. Attorneys in the workers’ comp bar like to share stories of a big-box retailer being threatened with having to close on the weekend to satisfy an unpaid Award Letter.
It gives you settlement leverage.
An open award that obligates the insurer to make weekly benefit payments and pay for ongoing medical treatment increases the carrier’s exposure and reserves. An Award Letter gives you more leverage in workers’ compensation settlement negotiations than not having an Award Order, especially when the other side disputes that you suffered a compensable work injury or an occupational disease. I prefer to negotiate a settlement when the injured employee has an award.
Does the Award Order close my case?
No. An Award Order is not a full and final settlement, and it does not cash out future medical treatment.
The order resolves the pending dispute. And in a workers’ compensation case, many disputes can arise.
You can still file a change in condition application to obtain a new Award Order if your disability status changes, you develop a compensable consequence, the insurer denies prescribed medical treatment, or you want to obtain permanent partial disability benefits after reaching MMI.
What if the order doesn’t cover everything?
This is a common situation. You can still have a hearing even if an order exists.
Suppose you hurt your shoulder and your back in the same forklift accident, but the insurer agrees to cover only your shoulder. You can – and should – get an Award Letter for the shoulder. This establishes a compensable accident. Then you should pursue a claim for the back injury.
What if I disagree with the order?
You have 30 days from the date the order is entered to file a Request for Review with the full Commission under § 65.2-705. Review is automatic.
After 30 days without a review request, the order is final. The Commission retains the power to vacate a final award for fraud, imposition, or mutual mistake of fact, but not because one side has second thoughts.
Ask a workers’ compensation attorney to read your Award Order.
The entry of an award is usually the start, not the end. Litigation can still follow.
If you have an order in hand and something on it looks wrong, or you want to know what it lets you demand, call (804) 251-1620. The review is free.