Personal Injury Claims : How Does Compensation Get Calculated?
How Quickly you Seek Medical Treatment – It’s widely thought that seeking medical examination after an accident should be your first priority. That is absolutely true. From a scientific perspective, it helps isolate the cause of your suffering. The longer you postpone treatment, the more grounds the other side will have to claim your injuries happened under different circumstances. Also, expediency will help your case– That each stage of treatment was urgent and necessary for recovery. Even if you’re someone who dislikes hospitals, you should come in for an evaluation. It makes no sense to suffer chronic injuries later in life just because you were too lazy to check-in.
The Amount of Times you Seek Medical Treatment – The number of visits does not impact the total claim amount so much as the nature of each visit. Your insurance might demand a small copay each time and if the check-in is mostly procedural, it won’t impact your compensation too much. Be wary of repeatedly seeking medical treatment with the intent of driving up your claim cost. Be especially wary of annoying your doctor or medical provider, or making them think your symptoms are imagined. This is called malingering and there is little that medical service providers hate more. Hospital policy forces providers to give treatment even when a patient is deemed malingering because of the off-chance the symptoms are real. But most doctors know the difference and their aggravation won’t help you in a courtroom.
The Gross Cost of your Medical Bills – The most significant factor affecting compensation in an injury case is usually the gross cost of medical bills. This is the most obvious corollary and the one a judge or insurance company is most likely to look at. Many people advise attempting to see the doctor as much as possible to drive up the total value of the claim. This is a controversial strategy. If you have a legitimate complaint, let your doctor know. If they have any mettle at all, they will ask you to come in and be checked out. Don’t annoy your doctor or give them reason to suspect malingering (which is pretending or exaggerating symptoms in order to receive medical treatment). Remember, they deal with malingerers all the time, it’s a sad fact of the medical profession and it won’t help your case.
Obtaining a Medical Report – Following treatment, you should get your doctor(s) to create a medical report. The report should include the type of injury, length of treatment, and what long-term impact the injury may have on your life. If you are unsatisfied with the report, consider asking for a second-opinion from a different doctor. Make sure you specify on your HIPAA release form that you do not wish this report to be released to anyone but yourself. Otherwise, the insurance company or other party might get a hold of it and use it as evidence during trial or adjustment.
Property Damage – Property damage is a blanket term that can apply to a number of injury scenarios: In a car accident case, it is usually the value of the car plus costs for a rental. In an animal injury, it might be the cost of destroyed clothing or jewelry. In a defective product case, it would be the cost of the product plus any costs the improper operation of the product caused. For example, if you purchased framing lumber that was too green, and the moisture went on to rot your drywall, which eventually caused a roofing issue, you might be compensated for both the cost of framing and roofing.
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