What to Do If the ART Rejects Your Work Accident: the SRT Filing

If your ART (Aseguradora de Riesgos del Trabajo, the workers' compensation insurer) refuses to cover your accident or occupational illness, you have the right to open a divergence-over-rejection filing before the SRT (Superintendencia de Riesgos del Trabajo, the federal workers' compensation regulator). You have a strict window of 20 business days to challenge that decision. At Conti Abogados we provide the mandatory legal sponsorship to overturn the refusal and defend your rights.

Immediate Action Checklist (First 48 Hours)

When the ART's rejection notice arrives, take these steps quickly to protect both your health and your compensation:

• 1. Keep the original carta documento: The postal stamp is what fixes the exact start of your strict 20-business-day window.
• 2. Get treatment through your obra social or private health plan: While the dispute is running at the SRT, your health plan has to provide full care. Tell your treating doctor explicitly that this is a rejected work accident.
• 3. Gather every piece of documentary evidence: Keep private medical certificates, emergency-room records, clinical histories, X-rays and, where relevant, police reports and the details of eyewitnesses.
• 4. Hand your medical certificates to your employer: Document every day of your leave so no unjustified salary deductions are made.
• 5. Contact a labor lawyer immediately: The divergence filing demands technical skill to argue the causal link between your tasks and the damage, and legal sponsorship is mandatory.

1. Common Reasons an ART Rejects a Claim

Under the Workers' Compensation Law, the insurer has 10 days (extendable by a further 10, if it notifies you properly) to rule on the claim. When it decides to reject it, it usually falls back on the following technical excuses, all of which can be fought:

• Non-work-related nature: They argue your hernia, tendinitis or sprain did not come from your day-to-day work, but from genetic factors, your age, or leisure activities outside the job.
• Pre-existing condition: They claim the condition already existed before your current employment relationship began, ignoring the aggravation caused by your recent work.
• Facts not established: They allege that the records you filed are not enough to prove how the accident happened, which is especially common in "in itinere" accidents on the way to or from work with no police report.

2. The Divergence-Over-Rejection Procedure at the SRT

A refusal by the insurer does not leave you defenseless. The rules allow you to open a divergence-over-rejection filing before the SRT Medical Commissions. This is an administrative process in which an impartial medical board reviews your clinical records, physically examines you and analyzes the causal link with your job. Its purpose is to issue a final medical ruling that overturns the rejection and forces the ART to grant full cover, from surgery and rehabilitation all the way to the final payment of the impairment compensation.

3. The Strict 20-Business-Day Deadline

The most critical aspect of an ART rejection is the time you have to act. You have exactly 20 business days, counted from the business day after you receive the notice, to formally file at the desk of the competent Medical Commission or through TAD (Trámites a Distancia, the online filing system). Once that window closes, your silence is legally read as tacit acceptance of the rejection. Reopening the matter later becomes an enormous evidentiary obstacle.

4. Keeping Your Health Cover Running

It is essential to understand that the ART's rejection means its in-kind benefits stop automatically. Your health, however, cannot be left unattended. You have to move your care to your union obra social or private health plan. They cannot refuse to treat you on the excuse that "this is an ART case". They have to provide the full care you need and, later, once the SRT ruling forces the ART to recognise the accident, your health plan recovers what it spent from the insurer through a reimbursement mechanism.

5. Why Specialized Legal Sponsorship Is Mandatory

The technical complexity of these medical files is exactly why the Superintendency itself made legal sponsorship mandatory in every filing opened before a Medical Commission. Your labor lawyer is not there just to keep you company; the role is essential in order to:

• Set out in writing, with legal grounds, the link between the way you work and the condition you developed.
• File and control the medical studies that rebut the insurer's position.
• Supervise how the SRT doctor conducts the examination and scrutinise the final ruling.
• Appeal to the Central Medical Commission, or go straight to court before the labor bench, if the decision goes against you.

Case Law and the Governing Rules

The framework protecting workers against unfounded refusals comes directly from Workers' Compensation Law 24,557 and its amendments (Law 27,348), and from the procedure laid down in SRT Resolution 298/17. Labor case law is unanimous in penalizing insurers that reject claims through generic formulas with no serious prior medical analysis, which opens the door to additional civil claims.