After a couple months without treatment, insurance companies will start to deny injury relatedness to a car accident injury case. How long do car accident victims have to start treatment following a car accident?
Insurance companies will start to deny your claim if you take too long to seek physical therapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy, or other treatment for your back and neck injuries suffered in the car accident. What is too long? This is tailored to each individual case and could be as little as three months without treatment or five months without treatment. Most soft tissue or spinal misalignment injuries should heal within 4 to 8 months according to most insurance companies so any start date following this time period may make it much less likely that you can recover anything in the car accident from insurance companies.
Insurance companies would like you to start treatment for your injuries following a car accident injury case immediately following a car accident because it makes it more likely than not related to the car accident. However, when there is a large gap in treatment or start of treatment following a car accident injury, it makes it less clear where the injuries actually came from. The reason for this is that there are a lot of unknown activities that could come into play to cause an injury that is similar to the one in the car accident. Well, at least that is the argument they will make.
As a Seattle personal injury lawyer, I see a lot of car accident injury victims get wrong or inaccurate advice from ER doctors that implant ideas into their head about the actual course of treatment they probably need after a car accident. ER doctors are very good at their job and see very severe injuries all the time. However, they become numb sometimes to less severe injuries like spinal misalignment or soft tissue injuries that really do require chiropractic care to create better alignment of the spine and return victims to full range of motion and health in their neck and spine. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see ER doctors tell patients that they should be fine or back to normal within one month or two following a car accident. This could not be further from the truth and could be mal practice. The good advice is to follow up with your primary doctor following a car accident to get x-rays, MRI, and more tailored advice to treatment of your neck and back injuries rather than take medication and sit around doing nothing for two months.
For these reasons, it is always good to check in with your primary doctor following a car accident injury case and call a Seattle personal injury lawyer to make sure you are doing everything right and that you can pay for your medical treatment while you are awaiting a settlement from the third party insurance company of the person that caused the car accident and your injuries.