A victim of work injury is entitled, under certain conditions, to receive medical cannabis treatment, through Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and according to criteria set forth in the Procedure 106 of the Medical Unit Liaison of the Health Ministry.
How to submit a refund request for medical cannabis treatment
To examine your eligibility for coverage of medical cannabis as injured at work, you need to provide your HMO with the following documents:
- Referral by an authorized physician on behalf of Health Ministry for issuing a medical cannabis permit.
- Referral by attending HMO's physician who specialized in relevant medical field, and concluded the necessity of medical cannabis treatment. For instance: if the medical cannabis treatment referral is granted following orthopedic diagnosis (lower back pain), the referring physician must specialize in orthoepy and so on.
- Medical Board protocol (if multiple board hearing have been held - you have to provide protocols of all boards).
- Permit to possess and use medical cannabis issued by the Health Ministry. The request with all require documentation will be examined by a service physician in the HMO, who has the authority to establish the need of medical cannabis treatment, in full or in part, stem from the work injury that has been recognized in your favor.
All required documents must be provided to the HMO, in order to avoid delays in the processing of your request.
Receiving money refund for the treatment
- You must come to the health maintenance organization (HMO) in which you are a member with all the required documents, together with all the receipts and prescriptions necessary to obtain a money refund.
- The duration of entitlement to cannabis refund is aligned with the validity of cannabis possession and use permit delivered by the Health Ministry.
- For each change or update in relation with the funding of the approved request, a new assessment of eligibility by the HMO will be required.
- If your refund request has been denied by the HMO, you have the possibility to file an appeal to the Work-Injury Service of the branch in charge of your file through the document delivery service on the website.