Insurance companies have a name for the amount of money that a claimant has spent for the diagnosis and treatment of an injury. Insurers refer to that amount as the medical specials. The medical specials reflect only one part of a case’s worth.
How do insurance companies attach a value to the claimant’s pain and suffering?
First, the insurance adjuster checks to see whether the claimant suffered a soft or hard injury. Insurers view soft injuries as less serious, because there is no physical evidence of the victim’s discomfort. A medical exam can be used to detect a hard injury. For that reason, insurance companies feel that those are more serious. That thinking gets reflected in the method used for determining a given case’s value.
In order to assess that value, insurers rely on a specific formula. One part of that formula calls for multiplying the total for the medical specials by a selected multiplier, normally a number between 1 and 5.
In cases where claimants have a minor or soft tissue injury, that multiplier is a 1 or a 2. In cases where claimants have a hard injury, that multiplier tends to be a 5, or perhaps a larger number.
How could claimants underscore the serious nature of their injury?
Personal Injury Lawyer in Halifax is of the view that a claimant should have the injury mentioned and described in the medical report. In addition, a reference to the prescribed treatment should prove helpful. Details on the treatment could showcase the serious nature of the harm done to the victim/claimant.
Reference by the doctor to specific symptoms could work to support a patient’s claims. For example, someone with a head injury should ask that the medical report include mention of those times when that particular injury caused headaches, a dizzy spell, unconsciousness or nausea. Someone with a back injury should ask that the medical report mention the number(s) for the affected vertebra (e).
What claimants must do, in order to carry out the actions suggested above?
Unless a victim, a future claimant has been seen by a doctor, or has gone to a medical facility soon after the accident, the evidence of an injury’s serious nature would remain hidden. In fact, the same claimant could be accused of failing to mitigate the injury’s effects.
Those facts highlight the reason that every victim of an accident should take the time to visit a hospital, a doctor or a medical facility. Otherwise, no doctor would know about the forces to which that patient’s body had been subjected.
Lacking such knowledge, a physician could struggle to diagnose what could be a tell-tale symptom. Hence, the message in a dizzy spell might get overlooked, even if associated with a traumatic brain injury (TBI).