The claimant sought entitlement to IRBs and various medical/rehabilitation benefits, including an attendant care assessment and functional abilities assessment. With respect to IRBs, Adjudicator Parish found that the claimant had proven on a balance of probabilities that she was substantially unable to perform the essential tasks of her pre-accident employment as a supervisor at Dairy Queen, emphasizing the claimant’s ongoing post-concussion symptoms, which were not addressed in the insurer’s IE reports. Adjudicator Parish further found that the attendant care assessment was reasonable and necessary because of the claimant’s self-reported difficulty with performing her personal care tasks, and that the functional abilities assessment was reasonable and necessary as it could have assisted with the determination of ongoing entitlement to IRBs. In light of her findings, Adjudicator Parish also granted a 25 percent special award on the attendant care and functional abilities assessment due to the insurer’s failure to investigate the claimant’s concussive symptoms.
