We treat injured people from both sides of the river. If your injury happened in Illinois, one thing is worth knowing before you accept a referral: the choice of treating physician is yours, and it is written into the statute.
We are a medical practice, not a law firm. The statutory position below is summarized from the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission’s own handbook and the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act; questions about your particular claim belong with your attorney or the Commission.
The right most Illinois workers do not know they have
Under the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act the injured worker — not the employer — chooses the treating physician. You get two choices of provider, and referrals made by those providers do not count against them. Emergency care and first aid do not count either.
If your employer operates an approved Preferred Provider Program, your two choices come from inside that network — but you may decline the program in writing after reporting the injury, and declining counts as one of your two.
Missouri runs the opposite rule. Under RSMo 287.140 the employer selects the treating physician, and an employee who prefers their own doctor may use one only at their own expense. Two neighboring states, opposite defaults — which is why an Illinois worker who assumes the Missouri rule applies gives away a right they actually hold.
Why it matters clinically, not just legally
A directed examination and an independent one produce different records. When the physician is chosen by the party paying the claim, the incentives around causation, work capacity and duration of care sit on one side. Choosing your own physician does not guarantee a better outcome; it means the record is built by someone whose only obligation is to you.
That record is what a reviewer, a defense expert and eventually an adjuster will weigh. How adjusters devalue claims covers what they look for.
What we actually do
Objective documentation first: imaging read against examination, electrodiagnostic testing where nerve involvement is in question, and function measured rather than asserted. Then interventional treatment aimed at the confirmed generator.
Dr. Padda is licensed in Illinois and holds full staff privileges at Anderson Hospital in Maryville. The examination happens at the Woodson Road office in Missouri; the Illinois licensure and privileges are credentials you can verify at home.
Communities we see Illinois patients from
- Alton — the shortest drive of any community we serve in Illinois
- Belleville — St. Clair County
- Collinsville
- Edwardsville
- Glen Carbon
- Maryville — where Anderson Hospital is
- Troy
What a defensible record actually contains
Claims are not decided by how much pain you report. They are decided by what a reviewer can verify months later, and that is a narrower set of things than most people expect: findings on examination that are reproducible, imaging interpreted against those findings rather than in isolation, and function measured on a scale someone else can re-run.
What does not survive is a file of visits recording that the patient still hurts. That reads as an absence of investigation, and it is the single easiest thing for an adjuster to discount. The subjectivity problem is the whole reason objective measures matter here.
Where nerve involvement is suspected, electrodiagnostic testing converts a symptom into a measurement. Where a shoulder or a spine is the question, imaging plus a diagnostic block can separate the structure that hurts from the three that merely look abnormal.
Which state’s rules apply to you
People who live in Illinois and work in Missouri, or the reverse, routinely assume the rule follows their address. It does not. Jurisdiction generally follows where the employment relationship sits and where the injury occurred, which means a Belleville resident injured at a Missouri jobsite may be inside Missouri’s system and subject to its employer-selects rule.
That is worth establishing early rather than after you have spent a provider choice. Missouri and Illinois injury law compared sets out how the two systems differ in practice, and it is the first thing to sort out if you cross the river to work.
What we do not do
We do not manufacture findings, and we will tell you when an examination is unremarkable. A physician who documents an impairment that is not there is worthless to you the moment a defense expert reads the file, because it discredits everything else in it.
We also do not treat an authorization as a guarantee. An approval means a payer has agreed a service is medically necessary; it is not a promise of payment, and the two get conflated constantly. We tell you which is which before anything is scheduled.
Frequently asked questions
Can my employer make me see their doctor in Illinois?
Not as your only option. The Act gives you two choices of provider, and referrals from those do not count against the two. If a Preferred Provider Program is in place you may decline it in writing after reporting the injury.
The detail is in The River Decides More Than You Think.
Is that the same in Missouri?
No, and the difference is stark. In Missouri the employer selects the treating physician under RSMo 287.140, and your own choice is at your own expense. Background: Missouri and Illinois injury law compared.
Does going to the emergency room use up a choice?
No. Emergency care and first aid are not counted as one of your two choices, and neither is non-emergency care obtained before you reported the injury.
There is more on this in Not Covered Is a Budget Decision. It Is Not a Verdict on the Evidence..
Will my care be authorized?
Authorization and payment are different things, and an approval is not a promise of payment. We verify benefits before scheduling and tell you plainly what is settled and what is not.
Not Covered Is a Budget Decision. It Is Not a Verdict on the Evidence. goes through it in detail.
Where we are
Accident and Injury Experts
4477 Woodson Rd, Suite 202, St. Louis, MO 63134
Next to St. Louis Lambert International Airport, with parking at the door.
Call (314) 887-5866 · info@injuryexperts.us