Have you had surgery or have you been recommended for surgery after an accident? This is a question and a situation that we encounter frequently here at St. Petersburg Personal Injury Attorneys McQuaid & Douglas. Now, what we found is, especially after car accidents, common surgical cases will be either to your knee, will be to perhaps your neck, your back, or your shoulder. Surgical cases in other types of accidents such as slip and falls or trip and falls or any type of fall case are typically to the hands or wrists or knees. Those are the main areas of surgery in those situations. But surgical cases are complex. They are not only, uh, much more invasive to, to a person’s body and require much more time in terms of recovery, but they’re also extremely costly. And because of that, they need to be monitored closely.
So let’s talk about a couple of scenarios. Let’s talk about a situation where you’ve already had surgery. So you may have been involved, for example, in a car accident. You’ve, you’ve had a significant neck injury. Uh, you’ve had to have some type of emergency surgery to repair that neck injury. Uh, and you are left with, um, you know, massive hospital pills. Now if you’ve, if you have health insurance or PIP insurance, um, you know, the PIP is really not going to do much, but the health insurance may kick in. If health insurance pays, they will assert a lien against the recovery in the case, if not. Part of our job as car accident attorneys is to recover money on your behalf in terms of damages and then pay those medical bills out of the settlement. And we will either give you the check and let you negotiate that on your own or we can pay that directly.
Now, the second situation that we encounter is a, and again, it’s also frequent with car accidents. We get somebody in who is in a lot of pain, uh, and the conservative treatment just isn’t working. They’ve tried physical therapy, chiropractic that they’ve done objections, nothing’s working and they’ve been recommended for surgery. Surgery cases can operate in two different ways in that situation. First is if you have a health insurance, the Dr. May and the surgical center may accept that that health insurance, and again, health insurance will impose a lien against your recovery. Another way is to assert an lop or a letter of protection against your case. So if the doctor and the lawyer have a, a some type of relationship that they’ve got, uh, uh, they’ve a previous working relationship, uh, they will sign an agreement between you, the lawyer and the doctor so that you can get medical treatment and then be reimbursed out of the proceeds of the settlement.
And then the third situation, this is really relatively new scenario. There are some medical funding companies out there that actually will, uh, pay a doctor on your behalf for that surgery. They’ll negotiate a price, they’ll pay that, and then they’ll assert basically a lien out of your case. You have to repay that amount plus some interest. So they’re really three different ways that you can get surgery in a case if you’ve been recommended for that after an accident. So as I said earlier, surgical cases need to be watched closely. They are complicated and there’s an a, there’s a lot of risks to a client, not necessarily in terms of their physical wellbeing, but in terms of their ability to recover and pay those bills and then hopefully put some money in their pocket for whatever type of recovery, lost wages, pain and suffering of that they’ve endured.
Uh, you need to really talk to an experienced injury lawyer, uh, because these cases need to be, it’s not a situation where you just go off, you speak to a paralegal, never talk to a lawyer, and then six months later you hand them a bill for $100,000. Uh, here at Saint Petersburg personal injury attorneys, we take these surgical cases very seriously. We work with our clients to make sure they understand the risks and how we do it, and make sure that they’re communicating with us on a daily basis. So if you’ve had surgery or you’ve been recommended for surgery after an accident, and you want to speak to an attorney and an experienced attorney to guide you through the process, please contact us for free consultation.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy.
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If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident, then you should take the proper measures to ensure you receive the compensation you deserve. Contact St. Petersburg Personal Injury Attorneys McQuaid & Douglas today and speak with an attorney. For over 60 years our firm has been successfully helping people who have been injured due to someone else’s carelessness. We have been nationally ranked for decades by US News and World Reports as a Tier 1 law firm, which is the highest ranking that can be received. Sean McQuaid and Jonathon Douglas have dedicated their careers to continuing the firms legacy of superior legal representation.
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St. Petersburg Personal Injury Attorneys McQuaid & Douglas
5858 Central Ave suite a, St. Petersburg, FL (727) 381-2300
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Sean McQuaid and Jonathon Douglas were voted best personal injury attorneys in Saint Petersburg, Florida for 2019.
