A car accident can quickly throw your whole world into disarray. Between the challenges of recovering from physical injuries, getting your car repaired or shopping for a new car, and managing your finances while you can’t work, what can you do to move forward? If you don’t know what to do after a car accident, your recovery may be much more difficult – and you could risk jeopardizing your right to financial compensation.
Here are the key steps to take after a car accident to most effectively position yourself for a strong injury claim.
Check for Injuries and Get Medical Care
Your safety must always be your priority after a car accident. Check yourself and anyone else involved in the crash for injuries. Some injuries may be obvious right away, such as broken bones or heavy bleeding. However, other harm, like concussions, internal injuries, or soft tissue damage, may not show symptoms until hours or even days later.
If anyone appears seriously injured, call 911 immediately and request emergency medical assistance. Try not to move them unless a vehicle fire or oncoming traffic presents immediate danger.
Even if your injuries seem minor, you should still seek medical attention as soon as possible. A medical professional can evaluate your condition, identify injuries that may not be immediately apparent, and start any necessary treatment. Prompt medical care also creates documentation that can support an injury claim if you choose to seek compensation for your accident-related losses.
However, if you are not injured or in pain, do not go to the emergency room “just to get checked out.” There is no machine doctors can hook you up to “run a diagnostic.” ER space is limited and should be reserved for people who are legitimately injured. Besides, the medical record will only say that the patient was not injured. If the next day your back or neck start hurting and you go to the doctor for it, the “no injury” ER note could hurt your case.
If your injury is bad enough that you will miss work, ask the doctor for an out of work note, even if your employer doesn’t require it. That out of work note will make it much easier to get you compensated for all of your lost income.
Tell each doctor, nurse or therapist about each pain or other symptom you have each and every time you see them. Those symptoms become documented in your medical records, and medical records are the single most important piece of evidence to get you a fair settlement. They are essential to prove that the accident caused those injuries and how bad those injuries are.
For example, if you are going to your primary care doctor for both back and knee injuries, and your back pain is much worse than your knee pain, it is tempting for you and the doctor to just focus on your back. But what if your back pain goes away and your knee pain gets worse? If the knee symptoms are absent from your medical records for several months, it may be difficult to prove that the knee pain you get treated for later is from the accident, even if you know it was hurting the whole time.
Health Insurance – In North Carolina, if you have health insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, file all medical bills there first. You may ask, “I thought that the other person’s insurance paid for my medical bills.” Eventually they will, but liability insurance will rarely pay for medical bills before you sign a release at settlement. The system our legislature set up in 2011 assumes that people will always file medical bills on their health insurance first. If they do not, they will probably receive much less money in settlement after all the medical bills are paid. We explain the math behind that phenomenon in another article.
