Mays Law Office · Updated October 2026

Wisconsin workers’ comp pays reasonable and necessary medical care for a compensable Marshfield work injury from day one. Wage benefits start on the fourth day off work, Sundays excluded unless you normally work them; the first three days are paid if you miss more than seven days or have permanent disability. Tell your employer about it within 30 days.

The 30 days run from the injury or from when you knew or ought to have known the nature of the disability and its relation to your work, and a lack of notice does not bar recovery if your employer was not misled by it (Wis. Stat. § 102.12). If the insurer has denied the claim, cut off or shorted your checks, or sent you to a doctor it picked, call 608-305-4518 for a free consultation.

Work and Injuries in Wood County

Health care is the work that sets Marshfield apart. In the Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 American Community Survey, 14.8 percent of the city’s 9,516 employed residents hold health care practitioner, technologist or support jobs, about one in seven, against 10.1 percent of working residents statewide. Roughly two-thirds of them are practitioners and technical workers, a group that makes up 9.8 percent of Marshfield’s working residents compared with 6.5 percent across Wisconsin. Production (9.1 percent), transportation and material moving (8.1 percent) and construction and extraction (4.2 percent) employ shares of the city’s working residents close to Wisconsin’s 9.2, 8.1 and 4.5 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2025 county employment figures, health care and social assistance averaged 7,649 of Wood County’s 31,070 private-sector jobs, or 24.6 percent, compared with 16.8 percent of private-sector jobs statewide. Ambulatory health care services, the industry group that includes physicians’ and dentists’ offices, outpatient care centers, medical laboratories and home health care, accounted for 3,266 of those jobs: 10.5 percent of the county’s private employment, nearly twice that group’s 5.5 percent share across Wisconsin. Nursing and residential care facilities added 1,262 jobs, 4.1 percent against 2.9 percent statewide, and more than half of them, 722, were at continuing care retirement communities and assisted living facilities for the elderly. BLS did not publish the county’s private hospital employment, which it counts at four establishments, to protect employer confidentiality.

Wood County at a glance

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), Wood County private-sector annual averages for 2025, each share taken of 31,070 private-sector jobs.

Manufacturing ranks second with 4,320 jobs, 13.9 percent of private employment against 17.9 percent statewide, followed by retail trade, transportation and warehousing, and accommodation and food services.

The county’s 35,725 employed residents divide differently from the city’s. The same Census survey puts 10.2 percent of them in transportation and material moving, 5.4 percent in construction and extraction and 1.3 percent in farming, fishing and forestry, each above Wisconsin’s share (8.1, 4.5 and 0.8 percent), while production, at 9.6 percent, sits close to the state’s 9.2 percent, and health care occupations, at 11.6 percent, fall between the statewide 10.1 percent and Marshfield’s 14.8 percent.

Those jobs tend to bring different injuries. Nurses, aides and therapists strain backs and shoulders lifting, turning and transferring patients and residents, sometimes in one bad moment and sometimes over months of shifts, and they risk needlesticks, infections, falls on wet floors and blows from patients who are confused or agitated. Plant and warehouse work brings caught and crushed hands, cuts and lifting strains; drivers face crashes and loading-dock injuries; and store and restaurant staff slip, fall, cut and burn themselves.

If a Marshfield Claim Is Disputed

When an insurer contests a Marshfield claim, the first forum is the Department of Workforce Development (DWD), not a courtroom. Under 2025 Wisconsin Act 33, DWD’s Worker’s Compensation Division took back workers’ compensation hearings and their staff on January 1, 2026, after ten years in the Department of Administration’s Division of Hearings and Appeals.

Your route into that system depends on representation. Without a lawyer, the claim is referred to staff in the Division’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Unit, who review the disputed issues, check that the medical information supports the claim, and contact you and the insurer if they believe the issues can be resolved without a formal hearing. If the dispute is not resolved, you may request a hearing on Form WKC-7; DWD will not schedule it until a supporting medical report, usually a practitioner’s WKC-16-B, is on file, and a represented worker’s lawyer must also file a Certification of Readiness first.

Settlement stays possible at every stage. Under Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 80.16, a party may ask DWD for a mediation conference to discuss a mutually agreeable resolution without a formal hearing; DWD may schedule one once the other parties agree in writing, and an administrative law judge it assigns conducts it, with the discussions kept confidential apart from listed records. By DWD’s own figures, about 80 percent of hearing requests settle before any formal hearing is held, and a compromise needs DWD’s approval and can, under its written terms, give up some or all future benefits.

If the case goes to hearing, DWD sets the date, time and place by a written notice served or mailed to each party at least 10 days ahead (Wis. Stat. § 102.17(1)(a)2). In DWD’s words, hearings are generally held near the municipality of the applicant’s residence; it holds them in Madison, Milwaukee, Appleton, Eau Claire, Green Bay, La Crosse and Wausau, and the closest of those seven to Marshfield is the Wausau Hearing Office, 2100 Stewart Ave., Suite 160, Wausau, WI 54403, though the notice states the actual place. DWD schedules hearings only by written letter, so verify any call, text or email about one with the Division.

Filing a hearing application tolls the statute of limitations while the case is pending, never past the later of final disposition or the date the period would otherwise have ended; it does not revive a period that has already run, and the period runs again after an order dismissing the application without prejudice (Wis. Stat. § 102.17(4)(a)1). DWD or the Labor and Industry Review Commission must receive a petition for review of the judge’s decision within 21 days after DWD mails it, and a late petition is dismissed unless it was late for a reason beyond the petitioner’s control (Wis. Stat. § 102.18(3)). A party aggrieved by the commission’s order may then start a circuit court action within 30 days of that order by serving the complaint as the statute requires and filing the summons and complaint with the clerk of the circuit court, naming the commission and every party the commission identifies as defendants; the court may add 30 days for a party prejudiced by an exceptional delay in receiving the order (Wis. Stat. § 102.23(1)(a)2).

Marshfield Workers’ Comp Questions

My back gave out after years of lifting residents at a Marshfield nursing home, with no single accident. Is that covered?

It can be. When medical evidence ties it to the work, Wisconsin generally treats a condition that develops from repeated work activity as an occupational disease, which has no statute of limitations (Wis. Stat. § 102.17(4)(b)). Notice is still due within 30 days of the injury or of when you knew or ought to have known its nature and relation to your work, and compensation is barred if nothing beyond medical or burial expense is paid and no application is filed within two years of either, unless your employer knew or should have known of the injury in that time (§ 102.12).

A patient struck me while I was giving care at a Marshfield hospital. Does workers’ comp cover that?

Usually it does. Coverage turns on whether the injury arose out of your employment while you were performing service growing out of and incidental to it (Wis. Stat. § 102.03(1)), not on fault: DWD says an injured worker may receive benefits regardless of who caused or helped cause the injury. Its Worker Resources page lists three situations with no right to benefits: an intentionally self-inflicted injury, horseplay or fighting the injured worker started, and a voluntary off-duty activity, which the statute frames as a voluntary, unpaid program, event or activity designed to improve your physical well-being (§ 102.03(1)(c)3). Conduct can still cut benefits under Wis. Stat. § 102.58: failing to use safety devices provided under a statute, rule or order, adequately maintained and reasonably enforced, or to obey a reasonable safety rule the employer adopted and reasonably enforces and you had notice of, reduces compensation and death benefits 15 percent, up to $15,000; a violation of the employer’s drug or alcohol policy that was causal to the injury bars compensation and death benefits, though medical treatment stays payable.

My Marshfield employer sends me on overnight trips for training or to work at other sites. Am I covered while I’m away?

Generally, yes. Under Wis. Stat. § 102.03(1)(f), an employee whose employment requires travel is deemed to be performing service growing out of and incidental to the employment at all times while on a trip, except during a deviation for a private or personal purpose, and acts reasonably necessary for living are not a deviation; DWD’s guide for injured workers names eating and sleeping as covered time. On a trip outside Wisconsin, § 102.03(5) also decides whether Wisconsin benefits reach the injury, as they can when your employment is principally localized in Wisconsin.

I got hurt in my first week at a new Marshfield job, still in training. Am I covered?

Most likely. DWD says coverage begins on the first day of work for an employer the law covers, whether or not you are on probation or in training. Outside farming, an employer is subject to the law from the day it employs three or more people for work in Wisconsin, or, with fewer, from the 10th day of the month after a calendar quarter in which it paid $500 or more in wages (Wis. Stat. § 102.04(1)(b)). Tell your supervisor right away, even if the injury seems minor.

Who pays the medical bills for a work injury, and what if a provider bills me?

For a compensable injury, the insurer, or your employer if it is self-insured, pays reasonable and necessary treatment and the mileage to get it, DWD’s guide for injured workers explains. Send any bill you receive to your employer or its insurer, and send itemized receipts for anything you paid yourself. The insurer may dispute a provider’s fee as unreasonable or a treatment as unnecessary and refuse that charge, but it must notify the provider, and once the provider has that notice it may not ask you to pay the bill.

What Workers’ Compensation Pays, and When

Weekly maximums follow your date of injury (DWD rate chart WKC-9572-P):

• Temporary total disability: two-thirds of your average weekly wage while the compensable injury keeps you from earning wages during healing, at most $1,326 a week for a 2025 injury and $1,375 for a 2026 injury.
• Permanent partial disability: at most $446 a week for injuries from January 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026, $454 for injuries from April 1 through December 31, 2026, and $462 for injuries on or after January 1, 2027 (the last two set by 2025 Wisconsin Act 145).
• Medical treatment: reasonable and necessary care for a compensable injury, with no waiting period. Once your employer knows of the injury and its relation to your work, it must offer your choice of a practitioner licensed and practicing in Wisconsin (a physician, chiropractor, psychologist, dentist, physician assistant, advanced practice registered nurse or podiatrist), with a second choice on notice to it or its insurer; treatment on referral counts as your chosen practitioner’s, one licensed elsewhere takes mutual agreement or a Wisconsin practitioner’s referral, and in an emergency the employer may arrange treatment first, then offer your choice (Wis. Stat. § 102.42(2)(a); DWD guide WKC-18-P).

Time limits:

• Six years for most traumatic injuries on or after March 2, 2016, from whichever is latest: the injury, the last payment of compensation other than for treatment or burial, or the date compensation would have been last payable without any advance (Wis. Stat. § 102.17(4)(a)).
• No statute of limitations for occupational disease, or for a traumatic injury that results in the loss or total impairment of a hand or any part of the arm proximal to the hand, or of a foot or any part of the leg proximal to the foot, any loss of vision or a permanent brain injury, or that requires an artificial spinal disc, a total or partial knee or hip replacement or, since the statute’s 2026 amendment, a shoulder or reverse shoulder replacement (Wis. Stat. § 102.17(4)(b); amended by 2025 Wisconsin Act 145).
• A two-year bar sits beside both: if nothing beyond medical treatment or burial expense is paid and no application is filed with DWD within two years of the injury, or of when you knew or ought to have known its nature and relation to your work, compensation is barred unless your employer knew or should have known of the injury within those two years (Wis. Stat. § 102.12).

At a reasonable exam the employer or insurer requests in writing, it must tender all necessary expenses, including transportation, beforehand; you may have your own practitioner, one observer and, if you have difficulty speaking or understanding English, a translator you provide present; refusing or obstructing a compliant exam suspends your right to begin or maintain a proceeding for compensation while the refusal lasts, and after a direction from DWD or the examiner the weekly indemnity accruing during continued refusal is barred, though this does not by itself end the claim (Wis. Stat. § 102.13(1)(b)–(c)). A lawyer’s fee needs DWD’s approval and is generally capped at 20 percent of the disputed amount awarded, settled or collected, or 10 percent, up to $250, where liability is admitted, the amount due is undisputed and no hearing or appeal is necessary (Wis. Stat. § 102.26(2)); case costs such as medical-report charges may still be billed, DWD’s hearing-application instructions note.

Our guides go further on filing a Wisconsin claim, responding to a denial, what a lawyer may charge and claims for a serious injury.

Who Handles Your Marshfield Claim

Workers’ compensation is where Attorney Lisa Pierobon Mays concentrates her practice, and she has represented injured Wisconsin workers for more than 25 years. She earned her J.D. cum laude from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1995, the year she was admitted to the Wisconsin bar, and from 2001 to 2025 served on the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Association of Worker’s Compensation Attorneys for District 7. Read her biography or visit our Wisconsin workers’ compensation practice page.

From its office in Middleton, Mays Law Office represents injured workers across Wisconsin, Marshfield’s among them. Call 608-305-4518 or use the contact page; once the office has your details, Attorney Mays returns your call for a free consultation. Se habla español.

Workers’ Comp Help Near Marshfield

Workers in nearby cities can start from their own city’s page:

• Wisconsin Rapids workers’ comp help
• workers’ compensation claims in Stevens Point
• workers’ compensation claims in Wausau
• injured workers in Wautoma
• Chippewa Falls workers’ comp help

For more on filing a claim and on answering a denial, see these two guides:

• how to file a workers’ compensation claim in Wisconsin
• what to do if your workers’ comp claim is denied