What happens after I'm done treating for my injuries?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  Hello everyone this is Robert Mansour, and today I wanted to make a brief video about what happens after you have finished treating for your personal injury accident. I get this call all the time, my client's finished treating at their doctor, or they finished their physical therapy, and they call me basically the next day, and they're like, "What next? What's going to happen now?" I try to explain to them that it's going to be a few more weeks before anything really happens, because here's what needs to occur. I need to assemble all the medical records and all the bills from all the different health care providers that they've been to.

Also, if they just finished going to the doctor, and they've just finished going with a physical therapist, those people need some time to generate all the bills, and to generate all the reports that are needed to help present the personal injury claim. It doesn't happen overnight, it takes some time. Then after I get everything I have to review everything. I have to dissect it, I have to see what it all ... How it all comes together, and how it all fits together. Then I have to present the case to the insurance company, and that requires, generally speaking, what's called a demand letter. The demand letter is basically where I present our demand to the insurance company, that we demand to settle the case.

Sometimes you put a number in there, sometimes you don't put a number in there, and then the dialog begins between the insurance company and the attorney's office. Now, keep in mind just because I send a letter to the insurance company doesn't mean the very next day I get a call. Most insurance adjusters have about two hundred files sitting on their desk at any given time. My letter comes in, along with the supporting documents for your case, and it just sits on their desk probably for a good thirty days before they can do anything with it. I tell clients that after they're finished with the doctor and everything, about thirty days later I'm in a position, provided I have everything I need, to present their case. Then about thirty to forty-five days after that we hear from the insurance company.

For the most part, you can count on about sixty days after you're finished treating before you hear anything. Now, invariably I run into some problems, especially if there's a client who has been to a dozen different health care providers. Each of those health care providers has their own billing department, they have their own records department, in some cases there is a collection agency, in some cases some of these departments are out of state, and so they close and open at different times of day than California. In some cases we make phone calls to these places, and they never return our calls. In some cases we're promised records, and I paid for them and I never get them. Just because that's the way that's supposed to go, things don't always unfold as smoothly as I would like.

That gives you a little bit of an idea of what happens after you're finished treating. I present the claim once I have everything that I need to have, the insurance company responds, the negotiations begin. Now, as part of the negotiations I need to make sure that all of your health care providers have been paid. Some of them have not been paid, and we need to make sure that they are. If anything has gone to collections we need to make sure we work with the collection agency. If Medicare is involved or Medi-Cal, or your health care insurance is involved, we need to make sure we keep them in the loop. As you can see there's many different variables that go into settling a case, and it's not just a matter of finishing your treatment and then you get a settlement the next day.

I hope this helps you understand a little bit about what the mechanics are, and if you have any questions you could please call my office or send me an email. Thank you very much.