MEDICAL RECORDS AND MEDICAL BILLING

Personal injury cases, whether a dog bite, or a car collision is heavy on medical records. Medical records consist of the medical treatment record and the medical billing record. Insurance adjusters require both before they will consider making an offer to compensate you for your injuries.

Medical records come in many forms. There are ambulance billing and treatment records. Then once at the Emergency Room, there are ER records. ER records consist of the hospital/facility’s billing, the ER physicians’ billings, the Anaesthesiologist’s billings, and the radiologist’s billing. Each entity or person billing for their medical services will also have a separate medical treatment record.

After discharge from the ER, you may followup with your general practice family doctor, thereafter you may be referred to a physical therapist or a chiropractic physician. Again, each of these providers will have bills and records that your personal injury attorney must obtain.

Your car collision attorney can not obtain these records until you are done treating at the facility or with the provider. This all takes time and lots of it. Once medical records can be obtained, it will take possible two months to obtain them. This varies by provider, but by far, hospitals are the worst offenders for timely producing an injured party’s medical records. They often go though third party vendors, which only increases the bureaucratic process.

Car Accident Medical Billing

Sometimes the client can obtain their medical records faster and cheaper than their attorneys can because the hospital sometimes will provide them on the spot, especially if the client calls ahead. The risk of having the client get the records is that they often will miss providers, such as the radiologist, or the ER physicians’ bill, thinking instead the facility’s bill covers everything.

Attorney Jacob S. Gunter regularly requests medical records and prepares claim packages for his personal injury car collision clients. He can be reached at (385) 269-9504.