A chiropractor plays a vital role not just in your recovery from a personal injury incident, but also in your claim with insurance. They help a lawyer write out the legalese of the incident which will affect your settlement and payments for care. This alone is the reason why any chiropractor you see needs to have qualifications and experience with personal injury.
In general, personal injury incidents can be difficult because symptoms present themselves often a few days and even weeks after the accident. If they don’t know something like this, you may end up getting poor treatment that has lasting effects on your quality of health.
Likely the lawyer you may be working with will have a trusted chiropractor in mind. If they don’t you should ask the chiropractor for a list of lawyers and attorneys they work with. This is a good sign that they are a trusted chiropractor.
Experience
Their experience with personal injury is the first thing that you need to talk about.
Consider asking the following.
How long have you been assisting with personal injury cases?
Do you have client reviews?
What additional continuing education or post-graduate credentials do you have for personal injury training?
Another indicator of how experienced they are is their intake form.
Working with Personal Injury
When the work starts to begin there are a few things you should beware of. Their intake form should be detailed and offer a full assessment of your incident. If they are listening you should be free to tell your story without prompts to try and manipulate your answers.
Questions on the intake should include information on:
- A Detailed Account of the Incident.
- Medical History
- Neurological Testing
- Orthopedic Testing
- Chiropractic Testing
These usually take a minimum of an hour to complete with the chiropractor.
Your chiropractor should also work with other medical professionals. References for other services to complete the intake form is important like different kinds of therapy assessments and more.
Giving Depositions
Depending on your case, your chiropractor may have to go to court for you. If they are unwilling to do this, then they may not be a good fit. Not only do you want your chiropractor to be willing but if they are experienced with personal injury they should also be experienced with giving depositions to strengthen your claims.
Paperwork Experience
If a chiropractor’s assessment of injury is great but their paperwork is lazy you can have several things happen to damage your claim. Here are some very common errors that can happen with paperwork that slowdown or hurt your process.
- Typographical errors with dates and medical history.
- Errors with understanding Medicaid Insurance.
- Chiropractors who copy and paste medical history instead of taking their own notes.
- Discrepancies with pain scale and treatment plan.
- Billing errors.
Their Resume
Having post-graduate experience is a must for a chiropractor dealing with personal injury claims. However, it goes beyond that as their length of experience is really what matters. The more cases they have handled the easier it is to flush out errors. The process should never be rushed and everything should be thoroughly checked over each time.
If you need any assistance in this, please contact Dr. Elsey at North County Pain Relief at 314.731.4201!
