How To Prove A Personal Injury Using Medical Bills?

Doctor’s bills and receipts for medication or medical supplies can serve as evidence of the actual costs of a given accident. Still, do those tiny documents help to prove all the elements of a personal injury claim?

What an insurance company can learn from medical bills and receipts

• What were the actual costs of the injury?
• What were the financial consequences of the injury?
• What was the size of the case that gave rise to the claimed disability?

Questions that are only partly-answered by the medical bills and receipts

• Was the medical procedure used for diagnostic purposes, or as a treatment, both reasonable and necessary?
• If a bill was paid, the insurance company views it as reasonable. In order to learn whether or not a procedure was necessary, the insurance company might consult with a medical expert.
• Was the plaintiff’s injury caused by the defendant’s actions?

A plaintiff would need the help of a lawyer, in order to answer that question. A lawyer could fight charges coming from the defendant’s defense team.

For instance, that team might claim that the plaintiff contributed to creation of the injury, or made a small injury much worse. A defense team might use such claims to cast doubt on the assertion that the defendant’s actions caused the client’s serious medical problem.

Possession of a given bill does not always convince an insurance company that a given procedure was reasonable and necessary.

Medical science keeps developing newer procedures. An insurance company might not be familiar with a procedure that was used on an injured policy holder.

In addition, insurance companies do not like to reimburse an injured policy holder for an expensive diagnostic procedure. A Personal Injury Lawyer in Oakville might need to consult with an expert, in order to understand the purpose of that expensive diagnostic procedure.

The added information in a receipt

A bill gives the cost for a given procedure, but it does not serve as proof that the same procedure was paid for. That proof can come from the receipt. As stated above, the insurance company views payment of a bill as proof of its reasonable nature. Someone that was injured in an accident ought to keep that fact in mind, when preparing to pay various medical bills.

That equation of payment and reasonableness could prove a problem, if a victim/patient felt that a treatment was unsatisfactory. An insurance company will not reimburse a payment for an unreasonable and ineffective treatment. Still, a doctor or hospital can demand a payment, unless it can be shown that the billing facility/office was guilty of medical malpractice. That problem suggests the difficulties linked to filing a claim for medical malpractice. Few patients choose to pursue such a case.