The Company Doctor.

Do you have to see the doctor the company sends you to? If your employer carries workers’ compensation, no. Texas law gives you, not the company, the initial choice of the doctor who will treat you. If the insurance carrier uses a certified network, you choose from the network’s list. And in an emergency, go to the nearest emergency room.

It often goes like this. The day of the accident, someone from the company drives you to a clinic the company picked, or puts you on the phone or on a video call with a nurse or a doctor the company pays. Being seen that day can be a good thing. What matters is knowing that the law does not give the company the right to choose your doctor.

What the law says.

Outside an emergency, the worker is treated by a doctor from the approved list, and the worker makes the initial choice (Labor Code Section 408.022). A worker who is not satisfied with that choice can notify the Division of Workers’ Compensation and ask to select an alternate doctor, in writing with the reasons, or by telephone when a medical need for an immediate change exists. If the carrier uses a certified network, then “for each injury, an injured employee shall select a treating doctor from the list of all treating doctors under contract with the network in that service area” (Insurance Code Section 1305.103(b)).

Put simply: outside a network, you pick the first doctor. Inside a network, you pick from the network’s list. Either way, you pick. If you do not know whether your claim is in a network, ask the carrier and write down the answer, the date, and who told you.

Why it matters who your doctor is.

Because that doctor is the door to everything else. Outside an emergency, “all health care must be approved or recommended by the employee’s treating doctor” (Section 408.021(c)). The specialist, the therapy, the imaging, the surgery: all of it goes through that doctor, and what that doctor writes about your injury, and about whether you can work, weighs on everything that follows. The law entitles you to “all health care reasonably required by the nature of the injury as and when needed” (Section 408.021(a)). So with the doctor you choose, do not play tough. Tell the doctor everything that hurts, from the first day.

If the company’s doctor is already treating you.

Do not stay quiet. Depending on how it happened, the choice may still be yours, or you may need to ask for a change. The request goes to the Division in writing, with the reasons (Section 408.022(b)). Among the things the Division may consider: whether the treatment is medically inappropriate, whether you are receiving the care you need to reach maximum medical improvement, and whether a conflict has damaged the relationship between you and the doctor (Section 408.022(c)).

Two more things. A change is not allowed just to get a new impairment rating or a new medical report (Section 408.022(d)). And some things do not count as a change of doctor at all: a referral by your doctor when it is medically reasonable, a second opinion on the diagnosis or the treatment, a new doctor because yours died, retired, or became unavailable, or a change because you moved (Section 408.022(e)). Inside a network, the rules for choosing and changing doctors are the network rules of Chapter 1305 of the Insurance Code (Section 408.022(f)).

If your employer has no workers’ comp.

Everything above is the comp system. If your employer does not carry comp, those rules do not apply, and if the company has its own injury plan, the plan has its own rules about doctors; ask for a copy in writing. If, after you are hurt, someone hands you a paper giving up your right to sue, the law requires several things before it counts, one of them that you already had a medical evaluation from a doctor who is not an emergency-care doctor (Section 406.033(f)). A waiver signed before the injury is void (Section 406.033(e)). And when your employer opted out, you can sue it directly: see Non-Subscriber Work Injury.

You choose the doctor who treats you. And what you tell that doctor, tell it all.