In a Workers' compensation benefit review conference, Texas state law only allows for two conferences on a disputed issue. That means if your insurance carrier is disputing whether to pay you for a period of time, that can only be the subject of two conferences before it has to go before the judge in a contested case hearing.
And normally, because of that rule, they will automatically set the second conference to occur 30-60 days after the first to keep the process on track toward resolution.
But what happens if you're not all that keen on pursuing the dispute, or it may take longer than that to get the evidence together?
Depending on the issue, the benefit review officer may allow the case to be put on a "reset on request." That means the case will be removed from the docket, no automatic second conference will be scheduled, and the second conference will be scheduled only on the specific request of the party at a later date. In other words, if you want to come back for a second conference, you start from a new request and at that point, you get one conference before the matter is placed before a judge.
This remedy is not available in all cases. If the dispute is time sensitive (for example, a dispute over whether the claimant has reached maximum medical improvement and what the proper impairment rating is), this generally won't apply because there is a 90 day window to file the dispute, and the "reset on request" maneuver effectively drops the dispute, allowing the certification to go final if the second conference is not requested within 90 days. So normally they will not grant such a request, and if so, will only do so with clear warning that the request is being dropped and may affect finality of the medical certification.
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