OWCP Continuation of Pay (COP) and Form CA-7: How Federal Workers Keep Getting Paid After a Work Injury

If you're a federal employee hurt in a single work incident (a traumatic injury) and you filed Form CA-1 on time, you may keep receiving your regular salary for up to 45 calendar days while you recover. This is Continuation of Pay (COP), paid by your employing agency — not OWCP. If you're still unable to work when those 45 days run out, you switch to OWCP wage-loss compensation by filing Form CA-7, which pays 66⅔% of your salary with no eligible dependents, or 75% with at least one. To avoid a gap in pay, Form CA-7 should reach OWCP before the 45-day COP period ends.

What Continuation of Pay (COP) actually is

COP is the bridge between the day you get hurt and the day OWCP wage-loss benefits begin. Instead of losing income right away, your agency continues your full regular pay while you're off work for an accepted traumatic injury.

Three things have to be true to qualify:

1. You suffered a traumatic injury — one event during a single workday or shift (not an illness that built up over time, which is handled differently under Form CA-2).
2. You filed Form CA-1 on time — ideally within 30 days of the injury.
3. Your wage loss begins within 45 days of the date of injury.

COP is paid for a maximum of 45 calendar days, and every day counts toward that limit — including weekends and holidays that fall inside your period of disability. It is not 45 work days; it is 45 calendar days.

Who qualifies for COP — the three-part test

COP is not automatic. Federal regulation sets three conditions, and all three have to be met. Miss any one of them and your agency is not obligated to continue your pay.

• The injury is a traumatic injury — caused by a specific event or incident during a single day or work shift — and it is job-related and the reason you are disabled or losing time for medical treatment.
• You file Form CA-1 within 30 days of the date of injury.
• You begin losing time from work because of that injury within 45 days of the injury.

The third condition is the one people trip on without realizing it. If you tough it out, keep working through the pain, and only stop months later when the injury worsens, you can satisfy conditions one and two and still fall outside the 45-day window for beginning to lose time.

How to elect COP on Form CA-1

• Report the injury to your supervisor as soon as you can, and keep a record of when you did.
• Complete Form CA-1 and check the box electing Continuation of Pay rather than sick or annual leave.
• Submit it through your agency within 30 days and keep your dated receipt or ECOMP confirmation.
• Get treated by an OWCP-enrolled physician promptly, and ask your agency for a Form CA-16 so that treatment is authorized and paid.

The election matters. If you take sick or annual leave instead of electing COP, you are spending your own accrued leave on a work injury. Leave used this way can often be repurchased later using Form CA-7a, but that is a second process with its own paperwork — far simpler to elect COP correctly the first time.

COP vs. OWCP compensation — they are not the same thing

This trips up a lot of federal workers, so it's worth being clear:

• COP = your agency pays your full salary for up to 45 days after a traumatic injury.
• OWCP compensation = the Department of Labor pays a percentage of your salary once COP ends (or, for occupational-disease claims filed on Form CA-2, from the start, since those claims don't get COP).

The tax line is worth pausing on, because it surprises people when the first OWCP payment arrives. COP is your salary, so it is taxed and your usual deductions keep coming out — retirement, health insurance, TSP. Wage-loss compensation is not taxed. That is why a drop from full salary to 66⅔% is generally a smaller hit to your take-home pay than the percentage alone suggests.

The 3-day waiting period

FECA includes a 3-day waiting period during which wage-loss compensation is generally not payable. Here's the practical part most people miss: if your disability extends beyond 14 days, compensation for those first 3 days is paid retroactively. For traumatic-injury claims, this waiting period is normally applied at the end of the 45-day COP period — not at the start — so COP itself typically covers you from day one.

When and how to file Form CA-7

Form CA-7, Claim for Compensation, is how you ask OWCP to pay you once your salary continuation ends and you're in Leave Without Pay (LWOP) status because of your accepted condition.

Timing matters:

• If medical evidence shows your disability will continue past 45 days, your agency should give you Form CA-7 by about the 30th day of the COP period and submit it to OWCP by roughly the 40th day — the goal is to have it in before COP expires so your pay doesn't stop.
• After that, if you're still disabled, you generally file a new CA-7 every two weeks until OWCP tells you otherwise.

You'll need supporting medical evidence showing you're unable to work because of the accepted injury. This is where your treating clinic matters — the compensation follows the documentation. Thin notes, missing work-status reports, or vague functional restrictions can delay OWCP's decision and stop your pay.

How OWCP wage-loss compensation is calculated

Once you're on OWCP compensation for total disability:

• 66⅔% of your pay rate if you have no eligible dependents.
• 75% of your pay rate if you have at least one eligible dependent (for example, a spouse living with you, or a qualifying child).

For comparison, official leave (annual or sick leave) is paid at 100% — which is one reason many workers weigh whether to use leave or go into LWOP and claim compensation. It's a personal decision worth discussing with your agency and a knowledgeable provider, since burning leave that you may need later isn't always the right trade-off.

If your agency stops or challenges your COP

Two different things can happen to your COP, and they are easy to confuse because they often arrive in the same envelope.

• Controversion — your agency formally challenges your entitlement to COP. It can do this while still paying you, pending OWCP’s final determination.
• Stopping pay — your agency actually withholds the money. It may only do this for one of the specific reasons set out in the regulations, and when it does, it must controvert on Form CA-1 and explain the basis for the refusal in detail.

Separately, COP that has already begun can end for ordinary reasons: you use all 45 days, your disability ends, or you return to work. None of those is an adverse action, and none of them requires a controversion.

If your pay does stop, the fastest lever you have is usually medical. A large share of COP disputes come down to an agency saying the medical evidence does not establish disability from a traumatic injury. That is a documentation problem, and it is fixable — get a current report from your treating physician that states the diagnosis, ties it to the specific workplace event, and describes exactly what you cannot do. Ask OWCP in writing to review the controversion, and keep copies of everything.

Common mistakes that cause a gap in pay

• Filing Form CA-7 too late, so COP ends before OWCP starts paying.
• Missing or thin medical documentation of ongoing disability.
• Confusing COP (agency, full pay, 45 days) with OWCP compensation (DOL, partial pay).
• Assuming an occupational-disease (CA-2) claim gets COP — it does not.

How NuThera helps

As an OWCP-enrolled clinic in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NuThera treats injured federal workers and documents each visit so your disability status and work restrictions are clearly recorded — the evidence your CA-7 depends on. Our team can also help you understand which form applies to your situation and point you to the next step, so your treatment and your paperwork stay in sync.