Understanding the Impact of Medical Treatment Delays on Car Accident Claims in Oklahoma

In the aftermath of a car accident that doesn’t cause severe, catastrophic injuries, medical treatment may not be your first priority. You may be more concerned about your totaled vehicle blocking the road, your unexpected time away from work, and the fact that the police are asking questions. But in reality, medical care is one of the most important parts of recovering after an accident—not just for your health, but also for your future legal claim.

Delaying medical care can have long-lasting, unforeseen consequences for your case. Call the Biby Law team to set up a time to talk now.

How prompt treatment solidifies your claim

After the initial shock of having been involved in an incident wears off, your health should be your number one priority—seeking immediate medical care is an important first step. There are numerous injuries that aren’t detectable right away, especially when your body is flooded with adrenaline and masking your pain. Still, prompt treatment is key to a strong prognosis.

While fault/responsibility is separate and apart from damages, they do work in concert as parts of the four components of any negligence claim:

• At-fault party’s duty of care
• Breach of duty of care
• Breach causing the loss, damage or injury
• The extent of loss, damage or injury

Immediate medical care helps prove the third bullet point—linking the other party’s breach of their duty of care, or negligence, to your injuries. Let’s say you were hit by a driver who was texting and rear-ended you at 40 miles per hour because they were looking at their phone. They had a duty of care to you by virtue of being on the road. They breached that duty by texting when they should have been paying attention. Their choice to text is directly connected to the injuries you sustained in the crash—but you cannot prove that if you do not have proof of the injuries. The sooner you get checked out and start building a paper trail of complaints, medical bills, and medical records, the harder it is to claim that your injuries were not caused by the collision.

What message does delayed treatment send?

Even though immediate treatment is the safest way to protect your health and helps ensure a correlation between the incident and any harm, many people still decide to put off medical care until the pain is severe or unbearable, or until the symptoms have lingered around for days or weeks. This can weaken their claim in a variety of ways.

The injury isn’t that serious

A long delay between an accident and medical care may indicate to the other party’s insurance company that your injuries aren’t that serious. Their logic: if your injury was as serious as you indicated, you would have gone to the hospital immediately. You wouldn’t have waited days or weeks. Of course, this is way too simplistic of a view, but they’ll take it anyway. Remember, insurance companies will use anything they can to drive down the value of your claim, and delaying medical care is a frequent angle of attack used by insurance companies.

The injury isn’t accident-related

The insurance company may go one step further and claim that your injuries aren’t even related to the accident. Logically, this does make sense—imagine someone is involved in a car accident and is lucky enough not to get injured. Later that week, they seriously injure themselves through their own carelessness. They then seek medical care and try to pin it on the car accident.

While this scenario can (and probably does) happen, it’s much more unlikely than insurance companies think. But again, you don’t want to give the insurance companies any ammunition to use against you. The longer the delay between the accident and your medical care, the more space they have to claim that your injuries aren’t even related to the accident.

Your delays made your injuries worse

Regardless of what happens after the accident, the at-fault party is still liable for what they did. But as the victim, you also have a responsibility to mitigate your damages. You can’t get injured, let your condition worsen, and then sue the liable party for your care. A big part of mitigating your damages is seeking care in a timely manner, following up as needed with your care providers, and adhering to their treatment recommendations. If there are unnecessary delays caused by the injured party, the insurance company may try to claim that your injuries are as bad as they are due to your own malfeasance in failing to take reasonable steps as it relates to your medical care—even if that’s not true.

Seeking care and protecting your injury claim

As you see, delaying medical care doesn’t necessarily change the actual value of your insurance claim. What it does, though, is give the insurance companies ammunition to deflate the value of your claim, or outright deny it. It gives them wiggle room to ask, “What if the injury was caused by something else? What if the delay in care is what caused the majority of their injuries? What if they’re exaggerating their injuries?” Insurance companies are very, very good at looking for weaknesses in a victim’s claim and then exploiting those weaknesses. They do this even if you handle every single aspect of your claim perfectly, so it’s important to avoid giving them anything else they can use against you.

In addition to getting checked out right away, make sure you keep track of your medical expenses, the care you receive, and the treatments you go through. This is one of the benefits of hiring a car accident lawyer early in the process; they can handle your paperwork as it comes in, keep it organized, and figure out how to use it for your claim.

Schedule your consultation today

There’s no shortage of things you need to do after an Oklahoma car accident, but don’t let a medical checkup fall to the bottom of the list. After getting your injuries checked out, set up a time to meet with the team at Biby Law Firm. Contact us online or call to set up a consultation.