Your client lost three fingers when a generator exploded at a forward operating base in Helmand. The carrier accepts the injury. Now the fight is over numbers. How many weeks of compensation does the loss of those fingers actually buy? The answer is not a guess and it is not negotiable in the way carrier adjusters sometimes pretend. It is written into the statute as a fixed schedule of weeks tied to specific body parts.
The Defense Base Act borrows the entire benefit machinery of the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. That means the same body-part schedule that governs a dockworker's crushed hand in Baltimore governs your contractor's amputation in Afghanistan. The schedule lives in 33 U.S.C. Section 8(c). It assigns a precise number of weeks to the total loss of each listed member, and it scales partial losses by a percentage of impairment.
Most state workers' compensation attorneys assume the DBA schedule mirrors their home state's chart. It does not. The federal schedule is its own animal, with its own week counts, its own loss-of-use rules, and its own interaction with the average weekly wage. Misreading it costs clients tens of thousands of dollars in benefits that were owed but never claimed. This reference walks through how body-part percentages convert into award weeks, how impairment ratings drive the math, and where the carrier's defense actually lives.
How does the DBA disability rating schedule assign weeks to body parts?
Section 8(c) of the LHWCA lists each scheduled member and the number of compensation weeks the total loss of that member produces. The structure is mechanical. Total loss of a body part equals 100 percent loss of use, which equals the full week count assigned to that member. A partial loss equals a percentage of that week count.
The week counts run across a wide range. An arm carries one of the highest values in the schedule. A leg sits close behind. Hands and feet rank below arms and legs but well above individual digits. Among the digits, the thumb and first finger carry more weeks than the smaller fingers, and the great toe carries more than the lesser toes. Hearing loss and vision loss each have their own dedicated week values and their own measurement protocols.
The DBA disability rating schedule body part percentages work the same way in every covered claim. You take the impairment percentage assigned by the physician, multiply it against the statutory week count for that member, and you have the number of compensation weeks owed. The compensation rate per week is two-thirds of the average weekly wage, subject to the national maximum in effect on the injury date.
This is why injury date and wage calculation matter as much as the medical rating. A 20 percent impairment to a high-value member can be worth more than a 50 percent impairment to a digit. The dollar value swings further depending on the wage base. We break down the wage side in our guide to how average weekly wage is calculated for DBA overseas contractors. The same impairment percentage produces very different dollar awards depending on that figure.
What is the difference between scheduled and unscheduled body parts?
The schedule does not cover every part of the human body. It covers the listed members: arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers, toes, eyes, and ears. Injuries to parts that are not on the list fall outside the schedule entirely. The back is the most consequential example. So are the lungs, the heart, the brain, and the body as a whole when an injury produces systemic effects.
Scheduled injuries pay a fixed number of weeks regardless of whether the worker actually loses wages. A contractor who returns to full-duty work still collects the scheduled weeks for a lost finger. The award is for the physical loss, not the economic loss. That distinction trips up attorneys coming from wage-loss jurisdictions.
Unscheduled injuries work on a completely different logic. They pay based on loss of wage-earning capacity, which compares pre-injury earnings to post-injury earning ability. A back injury that ends a contractor's career can be worth far more than any scheduled member because it can support permanent total disability for life. The mechanics of that comparison are technical enough that we devote a separate analysis to why body-part specificity controls lifetime benefit value.
The strategic point is simple. The same accident can produce both a scheduled and an unscheduled component. A fall that fractures a wrist and herniates a disc generates a scheduled wrist award plus an unscheduled back claim. Carriers routinely try to fold the back into the wrist rating or characterize a systemic injury as a scheduled one to cap their exposure. Spotting which body parts are on the schedule and which are not is the first move in valuing any DBA claim. The DBA disability rating schedule body part percentages only apply to the listed members, so the threshold question is always whether the injured part is scheduled at all.
How do impairment ratings convert into award percentages?
The schedule gives you the week counts. The treating or evaluating physician gives you the impairment percentage. The two combine to produce the award. For scheduled members, that physician opinion is the engine of the entire calculation, which is why carriers fight so hard over the rating itself.
Most DBA physicians rate impairment using the American Medical Association Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment. The Guides translate range of motion, strength, sensory loss, and functional deficit into a numeric percentage for the affected member. A surgeon who reports a 30 percent permanent impairment of the upper extremity is handing you the multiplier for the arm's statutory week count.
Ratings only become final at maximum medical improvement. Before that point, the injury is still healing and the percentage can change. The carrier owes temporary disability benefits during the healing phase, and the scheduled permanent award begins once the doctor declares the condition stable. We explain why this date governs the entire benefit timeline in our breakdown of maximum medical improvement in DBA claims.
Disputes cluster in three places. The first is the impairment percentage itself, where competing physicians produce competing ratings. The second is which edition of the AMA Guides applies, since newer editions can rate the same injury differently. The third is whether the loss qualifies as a loss of use, which can support a higher percentage than a strict anatomical measurement. Each of these is a leverage point, and each is worth real money against the statutory week count.
How do you calculate a scheduled award dollar value?
The arithmetic behind the DBA disability rating schedule body part percentages is straightforward once you have the three inputs. You need the statutory week count for the body part, the impairment percentage, and the weekly compensation rate. Multiply the week count by the impairment percentage to get the award weeks. Multiply the award weeks by the weekly compensation rate to get the dollar value.
The weekly compensation rate is two-thirds of the average weekly wage, capped at 200 percent of the national average weekly wage in effect on the injury date. For overseas contractors earning hazard premiums and uplift pay, the wage base often hits that cap, so the maximum rate frequently controls the per-week dollar figure. Two contractors with identical injuries and identical impairment ratings can receive different dollar awards purely because their injuries occurred in different fiscal years with different maximum rates.
Consider the structure without the proprietary detail. A partial loss of a mid-value member at a moderate impairment percentage produces a defined block of award weeks. At the capped weekly rate, that block converts to a five or six figure award. The same member at total loss produces the full statutory block, which is why amputation and complete loss of use cases carry materially higher value than partial impairments.
This is also where the interaction with total disability matters. A scheduled award and a finding of permanent total disability are not the same thing, and a worker can sometimes pursue the path that pays more. The aggressive carrier defenses that surround the higher-value path are detailed in our analysis of why DBA permanent total disability triggers the most aggressive carrier defense. Choosing the right theory is often worth more than winning a few points on the impairment rating.
Why does the carrier's identity still matter for a scheduled award?
Attorneys sometimes assume that once the schedule fixes the number, the carrier is just a check writer. The opposite is true. The carrier controls the independent medical examination, selects the rating physician it will fund, and decides whether to dispute the impairment percentage or the maximum medical improvement date. Different DBA carriers run different playbooks, and knowing which carrier is on the risk shapes how you litigate the rating.
Identifying the correct carrier is rarely simple in the DBA world. A single contractor may have used several carriers across different contract years, and the injury date determines which one is liable. ClaimTrove's investigation engine cross-references prime contract awards, subcontract records, federal entity data, and FOIA database results to reconstruct who was actually on the risk on a given date. The complexity behind that reconstruction is laid out in our explainer on why DBA carriers change over time.
The scheduled award math is universal. The carrier behind it is not. Before you value a scheduled injury, you need to know which carrier you are negotiating against. You also need its historical posture on impairment disputes. Check whether the contract paper trail actually supports the coverage you assume exists. Getting the body-part percentage right is half the battle. Getting the carrier right is the other half.
ClaimTrove pulls from more than one million federal records across 18 data sources to identify the carrier, the prime contractor, and the subcontractor behind any DBA claim. Run your own investigation and confirm who is on the risk before you put a number on the schedule.