VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  Hi, this is Robert Mansour. I'm a lawyer in the Los Angeles area. One of my areas of practice is personal injury. I wanted to spend a few minutes with you on this brief video to talk to you about things you need to keep in mind when treating with doctors and physical therapists after your personal injury case.

What you want to make sure you understand is that the insurance companies are going to be evaluating your case partly on what's called the diagnostic codes, which means that what the doctor writes down as your diagnosis is going to be considered by the insurance adjuster.

That's why when you go to the doctor you have to tell the doctor everything that's bothering you and with great specificity. So you can't just go in there and say, “Oh, my neck hurts.” Well, what is it exactly? “Oh, I have radiating pain into my shoulder and between my shoulder blades or my middle back, my upper back and my lower back hurt me” rather than oh, my back hurts me. What is it exactly that you're feeling? What are your symptoms? The doctor has to write all this stuff down. It's transferred into a diagnostic code that is written in your medical records.

The reason this is important is because if something is not in your medical records it's like it never happened. So, if there's a diagnostic code that is missing or some complaints that you have that are not documented in those medical records, then it's like it never happened. The insurance company will not consider it. You see, the insurance companies are using software more than ever to analyze their cases. So a lot of major insurance companies now are using software products in order to evaluate these cases.

What they do is they'll type in your age, where you live. They'll type in all the diagnostic codes. They'll type in all the treatment codes, any treatment that you received from any place. Also, they look in the medical records to see what kind of complaints you had. This is why it's very important to indicate in your intake forms when you go to the doctor. When you talk to the doctor, every time you see the doctor, you've got to mention what you're going through, what you're feeling.

I had a client. She called me and she said, “I'm having a really hard time at work. I'm having concentration issues and also my back is killing me when I drive for more than half an hour.” I told her, “You need to tell the doctors about this. It needs to be written in your records.” The reason once again, if it's not in your records it's like it never happened.

So, once again, please keep in mind that you're got to tell the doctor everything that's going on. Those diagnostic codes are very important. The way the accident has affected your daily life you want to make sure you tell the doctors and the physical therapists about that. You know, every time you go to the doctor they ask you. They say, “How you feeling?” You go to the physical therapist, “What's going on? How are you feeling? What's been going on since the last time we saw you?”

That's where you tell them with great specificity what's going on so they can document it. Of course, if it's not documented then it's not going to end up in the software and the software will not analyze your case and the insurance adjuster will just treat it like it never occurred.

I hope you found this video helpful. My name is Robert Mansour, and thank you very much for visiting today. If you want to learn more about my practice, you can visit www.valencialawyer.com, or you can call my office at 661-414-7100. Thank you very much for watching this video.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hi, my name is Robert Mansour, and I'm broadcasting to you this brief video today from my home office in Los Angeles, California. One of my areas of practice is personal injury, and I wanted to spend today's brief video talking to you about aunt Sally. Aunt Sally got $40,000 on her case many years ago, and this is the problem that I sometimes have. Clients walk in and they compare their case to their aunt Sally or to their cousin Bill or to their friend Jose or whatever the case may be. They say, well, I don't understand. Why is my case worth this, or why are you concerned about this when my aunt Sally or my uncle Bill got $40,000, $60,000, $25,000, whatever the case maybe.

One of the biggest dangers that you can get involved in when either doing a case like this, a personal injury case, is comparing your settlement or your result to other people in your friends and family circle. The reason is that they might not live in the same region as you do. Their accident may have been more severe than yours. Their accident occurred in a different time. Frankly, as I record this video insurance companies don't like to part with their money. 

They used to part with their money a few years ago a little bit more readily. Now, not so much. In these economic times everybody is watching their bottom line, including the insurance companies. So while it might have been worth x ten years ago, not so much today. Frankly, in my region of the country juries are very stingy for the most part.

Another variable is the insurance adjuster that you're dealing with. Sometimes, you deal with an insurance adjuster who's very reasonable, willing to talk about the big picture. Other times you get an insurance adjuster who's not so reasonable and very difficult. Some of them maybe had a bad childhood. I don't know. The point is that you have to deal with the variables that are involved in your case, and don't get hung up on whether so and so got this much or so and so got that much for a similar case. That's going to lead you to a road to nowhere.

You need to evaluate your case under your circumstances in the time and region that your case is being handled. Then try to fashion the best result that you can, given the scenario that you have. You can't always control it and there are many variables that you cannot control, but at the very least one thing you can control is your tendency or the propensity, rather in many cases, to compare your result with the results of others.

My name is Robert Mansour, and I thank you very much for watching this brief video.  If you need help with your personal injury case and would like to discuss your options, feel free to call my office at (661) 414-7100.