If you’ve been in an accident caused by another person’s negligence, you have the right to expect that person (or, in most cases, their insurance company) to fully reimburse you for all medical expenses that you’ve incurred due to your injury. When it comes to future medical expenses, it can get tricky to calculate and prove what’s needed, and you should always talk to a Salt Lake City, UT personal injury lawyer about the specifics of your case to fully protect your rights.
Can I Claim for Future Medical Expenses in a Personal Injury Case?
Yes, you can, but it’s important to understand what this all means. The ideal for personal injury cases is that the victim reach the point of Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI) before bringing a claim at all. MMI is ideally going to be the point where you have fully recovered, and in that case, you would have no ongoing expenses. The reason it’s preferred for the victim to reach MMI is to ensure that the total amount of their expenses and suffering can be properly calculated.
However, in some cases, MMI doesn’t mean complete healing. It just means that the victim’s doctors believe that he or she will not be able to improve any further, or at least will not improve to any great degree in the near future. When this happens, the victim often requires medical treatment to continue for a long period or even indefinitely; yet the personal injury claim needs to be settled. When this happens, you have to calculate your future medical expenses, and these should be paid by the liable party.
What Can Be Included In Future Expenses?
Just about anything that is related directly to an injury sustained in an accident caused by another person’s negligence would count. This would include major things like hospitalization and surgery but also diagnostic tests, cost for medication, and costs for any medical equipment you might need, such as wheelchairs or walkers. Future medical costs could also include mental health treatment for therapy sessions or mental health medications and all follow-up care that’s required, including normal medical checkups, consultations with specialists, and ongoing assessments about treatment.
Beyond this, some victims may need modifications to their home to accommodate new disabilities caused by their injuries. This might include things like redoing a bathroom to make it more accessible, adding a wheelchair ramp, and more. Specialist consultations, pain management programs, rehabilitation and therapy, and the transportation costs required to deal with all of this can also be included. If a victim requires long-term nursing service, this should also be calculated for, as well as dietary and nutritional support if the victim requires assistance in this area due to their injury.
How to Prove Your Costs With the Help of a Salt Lake City, UT Personal Injury Lawyer
It’s always preferable when a victim can reach maximum medical improvement before bringing a claim because it simplifies things. It can be quite difficult to prove future medical costs, and you should never try to do so without the help of an experienced attorney. Most injury cases are settled out of court, and that is usually the best outcome for everyone involved. For you as a victim, avoiding trial usually means you get the money you need more quickly and with much less difficulty and expense. However, getting the insurance company to include a fair amount for future medical costs in the settlement is tough, and you need to be able to prove clearly what your medical needs require.
An experienced lawyer will gather all the evidence needed to prove this and help you with any special evidence that may be needed. It’s very common to need testimony directly from your doctor. Although medical experts can be helpful generally in testifying about the consequences of various injuries and their long-term effect on a victim’s life, no two patients are the same. Your own doctor knows you and understands the details of your situation better than anyone else, and your own doctor is the one best situated to estimate what kind of care you are likely to need.
In addition to medical testimony, you may also need estimates from professionals who specialize in calculating the way that costs change over time in the medical industry and the costs and timeline of setting up lifestyle modifications you may need. The purpose of expert witness testimony is to help non-experts, such as those at an insurance company, but also potentially a judge or jury, understand complex medical terminology and fully grasp what’s happened to you and what its effect will be on your life. Your attorney will have a network of expert witnesses to turn to who know how to explain these issues clearly to lay persons.
Calculating Your Future Medical Expenses
It’s one thing to prove that you need everything your doctor recommends for your full recovery; it’s another thing to properly calculate what it will all cost. When you’re projecting into the future, this can get difficult. A lot depends on the economy, the state of the medical industry, how you personally respond to treatment, etc. If you’re working with an experienced personal injury attorney, you can have confidence that your attorney has done this before and knows how to estimate these expenses with the help of the experts mentioned above. There are generally two common ways of calculating future expenses.
The first approach is taken if your doctors believe that, once you reach MMI, you will never function as you did before the accident. In other words, you will always have some degree of disability and limitation. When this happens, your lawyer will need to talk with your doctor and other experts about a life care plan. The point of this plan will be setting you up for success and calculating what it will take financially to allow you to live out your life as well as possible under the circumstances. This will likely include requiring modifications to your home and ongoing support of some kind.
The second approach to calculating your future expenses is used when your doctor believes you can completely recover, even if it’s going to take some time. At this point, your lawyer will itemize all the expenditures that you’ve already had and work with your doctor to calculate how many more of them will be required until you reach full recovery.
Why a Lawyer Is So Important
Insurance companies are always reluctant to grant future expenses because the numbers can never be exact. The reality is that some people recover more quickly than estimated, and some people more slowly, and it’s very hard to generalize. This means you need to work with a lawyer who is skilled not only in estimating these expenses, but also in persuasively presenting the evidence and calculations for them. The greater your future medical expenses are estimated to be, the more likely it is that you will have to go to trial because the insurance company will refuse to pay otherwise.
Contact Our Experienced Personal Injury Lawyers Today
Whatever your situation, reach out to the experienced attorneys at RamRock Injury Law today for a free case evaluation. We proudly serve clients across Utah. Visit us at our Salt Lake City office:
RamRock Injury Law – Salt Lake City Office
5353 South 960 East Suite 200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84117
Phone: (866) 427-5167
