When Should You Visit a Doctor After an Accident?
A car accident, of course, can be an extremely damaging event. The force that car crashes exert on human bodies often causes lasting harm. A collision can hurt soft tissues, vertebrae, regions of the brain, and much more.
However, if you’re involved in a vehicular accident, when should you see a doctor? As any medical expert or car accident lawyer in Huntsville could tell you, the answer is simple: Go to your physician as soon as you can.
Protecting Your Health
Even if you’re not bleeding and you don’t feel any pain after a car crash, go directly to a medical facility. You could have an injury or adverse condition and not even realize it. In some cases, symptoms don’t show up for hours.
After an accident, the body often releases adrenaline and other hormones that can temporarily dull pain. In fact, for a while, there might not be any pain at all.
In some cases, it can take days or weeks for someone to notice the effects of whiplash or a brain injury. And, if you don’t seek medical care after a crash, your injury or condition could get much worse.
For example, without medical attention, internal bleeding can continue unabated. Nerve damage can intensify. And vital organs could stop functioning. In many cases, such consequences are fatal.
Also, the sooner your doctor begins to treat you, the more successful your treatment is likely to be. With early treatment, you’ll heal faster, too.
Filing Your Insurance Claim
Another factor to consider here is your insurance coverage. Maybe you were in a single-car crash. Or perhaps, to some degree, you’re partly to blame for a car accident. In either case, you still might be able to file a claim.
However, if you don’t see a doctor soon after the accident, you might receive less compensation from your insurance company than you otherwise would.
Insurance companies rely on complex formulas to decide how much money their policyholders should receive. And, when it comes to car accident claims, the length of time a person waits to obtain medical care will factor into the formula.
As a rough rule of thumb, insurance companies use 72 hours as a benchmark. That is, if someone fails to see a doctor within 72 hours of a car crash, the insurer considers it a major red flag. As a result, the company may provide the claimant with substantially less money.
Imagine that you suffered an internal injury due to a collision, but you didn’t realize it. Also imagine that you chose not to see a doctor. Well, that injury would worsen over time, perhaps leading to major organ failure. Your medical and rehabilitative expenses would then be extremely high. At the same time, your insurance company might pay only a small fraction of those costs.
Building a Legal Case
In theory, if you’re in a car accident and the other driver is at fault, that person’s insurance company would be required to pay your crash-related medical expenses.
Those expenses might include the cost of ambulance rides, hospital stays, emergency room fees, rehabilitation services, surgical operations, and prescription medications. Plus, if you needed mental healthcare to recuperate, those fees would be added to the list.
In practice, however, insurance companies often use legal strategies to avoid paying claimants everything they’re owed.
For that reason, you must do everything you can to protect yourself legally and to bolster your case. That means visiting a doctor as soon as possible and collecting all of the medical documentation you can.
Getting to a Doctor
If you’re critically or seriously injured in a car accident, call 911. Then stay still and wait for an ambulance to take you to the hospital.
If you’re not severely injured, you could call a roadside assistance service to take your car away. Then you could contact a friend or a loved one and ask for a ride to your doctor’s office. Alternatively, you could call a taxi or utilize a ride-sharing service.
At times, however, it can be hard for patients to schedule appointments with their physicians on such short notice. If your doctor is unable to see you right away, don’t wait.
Instead, seek medical care elsewhere. You could get a screening at a community health clinic, an urgent care center, or an emergency room.
Then, once you know what specific medical problems you’re dealing with, make an appointment with a specialist to follow up. For instance, if you have a fractured bone, you’d want to see an orthopedist or orthopedic surgeon.
Taking On the Insurance Company’s Lawyers
The steps above are important because, sad to say, the other driver’s insurance company will want to pay you as little as possible.
To limit its monetary obligation to you, the insurance company will rely on its legal team. And you can be sure that each car crash lawyer it employs is highly skilled, knowledgeable, and experienced.
Indeed, an insurance company’s car crash attorney will probably try various legal maneuvers — including shifting blame onto you.
Furthermore, the insurance attorneys might lowball you. That would make it impossible to settle your claim out of court.
As a result, you’d have to bring your case before a judge or jury. And, if you delayed getting medical help after the car accident, the insurance lawyers are sure to bring it up in court.
When Your Medical Delay Is Used Against You
If you didn’t seek prompt medical care, the insurance lawyers might try to say the following: You must not have been badly hurt in the crash. And, if you’re suffering from medical problems now, they might argue that something else caused those issues. Maybe you had a preexisting condition, or perhaps you had another accident after the car crash.
Furthermore, the insurance attorneys might say that, by delaying medical care, you made your injuries or conditions much worse. Therefore, you are mostly responsible for your current state, not their client. As such, you are responsible for paying most or all of your medical bills.
The insurance attorneys might even use your lack of prompt medical care to attack your credibility in general. That is, they might imply that you’re not a responsible or reliable person, and your entire case is suspect. Such an implication might be unfair, but you never know which thoughts could sway a jury.
In any event, there’s no reason to take such a grave risk. Instead, you should just see a doctor immediately after a crash. Afterwards, be sure to follow all of your healthcare providers’ instructions carefully. Make follow-up appointments. Fill your prescriptions; take your pills at the correct times, and so on.
Along the way, gather as much medical documentation as you can. You should keep all of your healthcare-related forms, bills, prescriptions, and receipts. Even better, your medical providers could send all of those documents directly to your car collision lawyer.
Calculating Your Pain and Suffering
Prompt medical attention can also help you when it comes to pain and suffering damages. When you know exactly what your medical problems are, it’s easier to ascertain the right dollar amount for your pain and suffering.
Basically, pain and suffering compensation addresses accident-related hardships that don’t have specific monetary costs. They include emotional turmoil, anxiety, depression, missing out on fun events and activities, and losing time with friends and family.
Your car collision attorney will help you arrive at a precise pain and suffering dollar value. You’ll calculate this figure by adding up all of your other damages and then multiplying the sum by a certain number. That number will range from 1.5 to 5. The worse your pain and suffering, the closer the number will be to 5.
Relieving Your Anxiety and Clearing Your Mind
In all of this, when you see a doctor right after a crash, you enjoy greater peace of mind. You don’t have to fear that you’re suffering from an unknown medical problem and getting worse by the hour. And you don’t have to worry as much about your medical expenses.
Instead, you can focus your time, your energy, and your thoughts on rehabilitation and recuperation. And you can live your life without financial and legal problems hanging over your head.
To truly obtain this peace of mind, it’s also vital to have the right car accident lawyer by your side. When your attorney has a winning track record, you needn’t fear the legal proceedings ahead. If you can place full trust in your car accident attorney, you can concentrate on moving past the collision and fully reclaiming your life.
As a final note, if you’re looking for an excellent, dedicated, and caring car accident attorney in Huntsville, please get in touch with us at any time. If we take on your case, we’ll fight for you every step of the way: intelligently, ceaselessly, and tenaciously. That’s right: We won’t stop until you’re properly compensated for all of your medical issues, your pain, and your suffering.