What to Do During Your First Visit to the Doctor

When you first go to the doctor after being involved in a serious accident, you need to make sure that you mention everything that bothers you from the accident.  This is not a time to be tough and withhold information from the doctor.  I’ve handled many cases were my clients tried to be brave and did not mention certain injuries to the doctor - because they didn’t want to be a bother.  Once again if you don’t mention the injury to the doctor and it doesn’t make it into your medical records, the insurance company will treat it like it never even happened.

For example, let’s say a client has a neck injury from the accident but he doesn’t think it’s that bad.  He may choose not to tell his doctor during the first initial visit.  He’s probably thinking the injury will resolve over time.  The simple absence of that information in the medical records means that you never hurt your neck - at least in an insurance company’s world.   The insurance adjuster will doubt that the person had a neck injury because he did not mention it to the doctor during the first visit.  The client may have been trying to be polite, brave, or simply wasn’t paying that much attention to his neck at the time.  However, the absence of the information leads to some insurance adjusters to doubt the injury.  Therefore it is very important to be very inclusive of every single injury that you had after the accident, no matter how minor.  If the client chooses not to mention something and then it bothers them later on, it may be too late to assert that injury.

When you go to the doctor, basically start at the top of your head and visually make your way down your body, noting everything that bothers you.  It is better to be over inclusive rather than under inclusive during your first visit.  You can always withdraw an injury claim, but it’s much harder to add one!  The most important thing to take away from this entry is that you must mention every single thing that bothers you on your first visit to the doctor, no matter how minor the injury might be.