Need a Treatment Plan? Ask Your Doctor.

Need a Treatment Plan? Ask Your Doctor.

Posted by: Chris Hays
February 18, 2009
Topic: Treatment

Treating

Often, after a collision, people find themselves wondering: when should I see a doctor?

The answer, flippant though it may appear, is that you should see a doctor as soon as you need one. If you are in pain or otherwise feel like you need a doctor immediately following the collision, then you should see a doctor immediately following the collision. If you do not feel the effects of the collision until several days thereafter (which is quite common), go to the doctor then. Here’s the point: your potential personal injury claim should have no bearing on your decision to get medical treatment.

Overtreating

Another question I hear a lot is this: When should I stop treating?

Whenever a client comes to me with this question, I answer it with a question of my own: Are you still feeling pain? There are two reasons a person should stop treating after a collision: (1) you should stop treating when you feel better and your doctor releases you, and (2) you should stop treating when your doctor tells you that you are at the peak of your recovery. Your personal injury claim should be neither a boon nor a hindrance to your recovery plan.

A client recently said to me, “Well, I just don’t want to hurt my case. I’ll keep going to the doctor if you think I should.” This client’s concern is understandable, and comes up with some frequency. It’s natural for people outside the system to equate more treatment with more money. The reality, however, is that judges and juries compensate plaintiffs for injuries, not for treatment. While it is true that the court will review medical records and bills to determine the extent of a plaintiff’s injuries, it is unwise to artificially extent treatment to make an injury look worse. The legal system is too sophisticated to be messed with in this way. Because of tactics employed by less-than-scrupulous plaintiffs and attorneys, judges and juries are wary of plaintiffs who have “overtreated,” i.e., sought medical care not for recovery purposes, but solely for the purpose of bolstering a personal injury claim. Moreover, courts look with disdain on plaintiffs that attempt to make a claim bigger than it should be. Indeed, it is not uncommon for a jury in Nevada to award an amount less than the plaintiff’s medical bills because the jury was convinced that the plaintiff overtreated.

Undertreating

Medical treatment is not fun. Often, it’s uncomfortable, inconvenient and embarrassing. So don’t do it any more than you have to.

That said, undertreating is possibly even worse than overtreating, and maybe just as common. Just last week, a client told me that he treated with a doctor for a while and felt better, so he stopped treating. Then, two months after he stopped treating, the pain came back. The client wanted to know if he should start treating again. I started with a brief discussion of the first point, above: you should see a doctor if you need a doctor. Then I had to tell the client about the “gap.” Unlike overtreating, gaps in treatment can have a significant impact on the value of a claim; and the impact is negative.

A gap in treatment raises all sorts of damaging questions with the jury: Why did the plaintiff stop treating if she was actually hurt? Did something other than the collision lead to the second bout of treatment? What was the plaintiff doing during the time he was not treating? Did the plaintiff think his claim would be more valuable if he started treating again? In short, gaps in treatment are troublesome to the jury.

So what does this all mean for you? It means you should see a doctor as soon as you think you are hurt. It means you should stop seeing the doctor no sooner and no later than when you are as recovered as you can be. As a general rule, it is best to treat until the doctor releases you, for the health of your case and, more importantly, for your own health. In any event, your lawyer cannot be the one to make these decisions (but please keep us in the loop).

And one other thing

This article from the December 2008 Wall Street Journal underscores one of the points that my colleague, David Sampson, so eloquently made a couple weeks ago: make sure you have UM/UIM coverage! The article points out that as the economy worsens, more and more drivers are buying only the minimum liability insurance or are skipping the car insurance altogether. Thus, the worse the economy gets, the more important UM/UIM coverage becomes for you and your family. You can read David’s take on this point here.