Car accidents can cause serious injuries that have long-lasting impacts on your health and well-being. The physical and emotional pain may never fully go away. After an accident, you may very well be disoriented, confused, and overwhelmed. You may be unsure of what to do next. Remember this, one of the most important things you can do after an accident is to seek immediate medical treatment.
Seeking Medical Treatment After a Car Accident
After an accident, seek immediate medical treatment. This is true whether you are in intense pain or only feel minor pain. The adrenaline triggered by an accident can all too easily mask the true severity of an injury. Additionally, some injuries may take time to fully manifest themselves. For instance, a head injury may not appear to be a problem at first, but symptoms may develop over the next day or multiple days. While some evidence of a head injury may appear immediately, such as a bruise, other times damage is sustained without symptoms immediately appearing. Waiting to seek treatment may mean that your head injury is not diagnosed till later or goes undiagnosed altogether. Either way, this poses serious dangers to your health.
Failure to seek immediate medical treatment after a car accident not only jeopardizes your health, but it also jeopardizes your potential to recover compensation for your losses. Should you wish to pursue a claim for personal injuries caused by a car accident, failure to seek immediate medical treatment will be used by an insurance company to undermine or outright deny your claim. An insurance company is likely to assert that this is proof that your injuries are inconsequential. It also gives them a reason to assert that this is evidence that your injuries are likely to have been caused by something other than an accident or they were pre-existing injuries. The record generated by your initial visit for medical evaluation and treatment will act as significant evidence that you were injured in the car accident.
It is also important to seek follow up medical care as prescribed by your treating physicians. Medical records are the main pieces of evidence in a personal injury claim. They are used to support the assertion that an accident was the direct cause of your injuries and other losses. Failure to receive consistent, prescribed follow-up care will most definitely be used to undermine or deny your claim. In the eyes of an insurance company, if you are not getting the care your doctor prescribes, you are not that injured. We all know that there are countless other reasons why you may not have gotten follow-up treatment, but these reasons will be most likely completely inconsequential when it comes to valuing your case.
Pennsylvania Personal Injury Attorneys
For your health, seek immediate medical treatment after being in a car accident. To preserve the value of your personal injury claim, seek immediate medical treatment after being in a car accident. Focus on your health. This is your priority. Let the dedicated personal injury attorneys at Cooper Schall & Levy focus on the legal fight. We stand up to insurance companies so that our clients may receive full and fair compensation for their injuries. Contact us today.
