Knowing how to seek compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident ensures you don’t absorb future medical care costs that aren’t yours to bear.
Due to the complexities of these cases, such as the need for meticulously detailed medical records and expert witness testimony, injured parties or families of injured or deceased victims must seek legal counsel from a reputable and experienced car accident attorney.
Consult a car accident lawyer to explore legal options, including your right to seek compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident.
What Is Long-Term Medical Care?
Long-term services and support or long-term care (LTC) after a car accident includes medical and non-medical care for individuals who experience long-term injuries or disability as a result.
Also called custodial care, LTC involves services for people who cannot care for themselves over long periods—temporary or permanent. Long-term medical care after a car accident entails any services and costs associated with healthcare.
Compensation for Long-Term Medical Care After a Car Accident
Long-term medical care expenses may include diagnostic, therapeutic, treating, curing, rehabilitative, and preventative treatment services.
Examples of long-term medical care costs you can seek compensation for after a car accident are:
- Home Health Care: Home health care may include medical services such as skilled nursing, physical therapy, speech and language therapy, and occupational therapy. It may also involve non-medical services like assistance with daily living needs, such as bathing, grooming, dressing, eating, getting out of bed, and walking.
- Adult Daycare: Adult daycare costs and primary caregivers’ work can also be calculated as compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident. These facilities center around rehabilitation, assistance with daily living tasks, medical monitoring, and caregiver respite.
- Assisted Living Facilities: Assisted living facility costs associated with a car accident are long-term medical care expenses you may seek compensation for. Services may include medication management, physical therapy, and other rehabilitative support. These costs often arise after broken bones, spinal cord injuries, and traumatic brain injuries.
- Nursing Homes: Nursing home long-term medical care costs after a car accident are typical of severe injuries like multiple broken bones, brain trauma, and spinal cord damage—resulting in long-term disabilities. They include assistance with daily living, skilled nursing, physical therapy, and other services depending on the severity of injuries.
- Palliative Care: Palliative care after a car accident includes pain management, emotional support services for the injured party and their family, and advanced care planning. Palliative care costs may also include compensation for a diagnosed shortened life expectancy.
- Respite Care: Respite care provides relief for primary caregivers and involves hiring in-home services with formal caregivers. You can recover these long-term medical care costs after a car accident.
- Medical Assistive Devices: The costs of medical assistive devices are recoverable damages and may include wheelchairs, walkers, braces, hearing aids, and vision devices. These expenses also cover prosthetic limbs, portable oxygen concentrators (POCs), continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, digital devices, and video conferencing tools allowing medical professionals to meet virtually.
Calculating the future long-term medical care costs after a car accident is an involved process that requires the knowledge and experience of a car accident attorney.
Factors include your overall health and how long you will live, accounting for inflation. Life planning experts can estimate the costs of procedures, interventions, care, and medications long-term.
How a Lawyer Will Seek Compensation for Long-Term Medical Care After a Car Accident
To seek compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident, a lawyer will secure detailed medical records, consult with medical experts, develop a medical treatment plan, and document the impact of injuries on your quality of life.
This process helps them adequately calculate future medical care costs, demand reasonable compensation, and litigate the case in court if it requires filing a civil lawsuit to see justice prevail.
Securing Detailed Medical Records
Having exhaustively detailed medical records is critical for seeking compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident. They are the foundation of your claim.
These records may include detailed treatment plans, medical reports, imaging, lab work, and physician notes highlighting the severity of your injuries or disability—and the ongoing nature of your condition.
Consulting With Medical Experts
Medical expert testimony is critical in establishing the need to compensate for long-term medical care and the extent of that need. Expert medical witnesses can testify regarding the long-term prognosis, future medical needs, the likelihood of future complications, and the projected costs of ongoing medical care.
Fortunately, car accident lawyers work with a network of licensed healthcare professional experts who provide invaluable testimony for securing long-term medical care costs.
Examples of expert medical witnesses your attorney may consult include rehabilitation specialists, surgeons, physicians, neurologists, and psychiatrists.
Developing a Medical Treatment Plan
A detailed medical treatment plan is essential for outlining anticipated long-term medical care costs. Your attorney will work with your medical doctors, surgeons, and rehabilitation specialists to determine your projected healthcare expenses.
Long-term medical care damages in your medical treatment plan may include future healthcare, potential surgeries, therapies, assistive devices, medications, and nursing home care.
Documenting the Impact on Your Quality of Life
Assessing the impact of disability on quality of life is a critical aspect of establishing long-term medical care value in a car accident claim or lawsuit. Accident victims should maintain detailed pain journals after a car accident.
An attorney will best advise you on how to document your circumstances properly.
Suppose disabilities prevent a car accident victim from keeping a detailed journal documenting the impact of their injuries. In that case, a lawyer may assist in finding someone in their life to help.
A well-detailed and dated journal can document how injuries affect:
- Pain: To accurately document how pain impacts your daily life, include your pain level on a scale of 1 to 10. Does your pain feel achy, dull, or radiate? Are you experiencing sleep disturbances due to your pain? These are important questions to answer in your post-accident journal. You’ll also want to note the pain’s location, duration, and frequency.
- Functional Limitations: Keep detailed entries outlining how injuries and disabilities make performing specific activities challenging or impossible. Examples of functional limitations your condition may affect include lifting heavy objects, cooking, eating, cleaning, driving, and personal hygiene care like bathing and dressing.
- Emotional Impact: The psychological or emotional toll of injuries and disabilities requiring long-term medical care needs is another component of post-accident journals. Note symptoms of emotional distress and anguish or psychological trauma, such as anxiety and post-accident depression.
- Work Impact: How do your injuries or disabilities affect work performance? Do they limit you from returning at full capacity? Do they restrict you from returning to work? Documenting changes in your work schedule, productivity, ability to perform specific tasks, or job title (demoted) is important.
- Social Impact: Explain how your condition impacts your social life. Note challenges, limitations, and restrictions on hobbies and leisure activities you once enjoyed. Detail how your disability affects your relationships with family and friends. Do people mock or stare when you’re in public due to your injuries? Are they causing you humiliation and embarrassment? Document these instances and the emotional effect they have on you.
Visual evidence is another solid and compelling way of documenting how injuries and disabilities impact the quality of daily life. Before-and-after photos may significantly strengthen your long-term medical care claim, and video evidence demonstrating the impact on daily life is also viable.
Documentation of how injuries and disabilities impact your quality of life helps establish evidence for your attorney to recover non-economic damages after a car accident.
Calculating Future Medical Care Costs
Calculating future medical costs requires the knowledge and experience of a car accident attorney.
Lawyers will use one of two methods of calculating these expenses—the total lifestyle approach and the additional expense method:
- The Total Lifestyle Approach: Lawyers commonly use this method when car accident victims sustain life-altering injuries. Your attorney will work with healthcare providers to determine a life care plan outlining anticipated long-term medical care needs. In addition to healthcare expenses, the total lifestyle approach factors costs for in-home modifications, in-home services, and transportation needs like vehicle modifications or replacement.
- The Additional Expense Method: Lawyers use this approach to calculate long-term medical care costs when an injured party is eventually expected to recover from their injuries and regain their former lifestyle without limitations or restrictions. Car accident lawyers consult medical professionals to identify additional expenses associated with your injuries while accurately assessing your recovery timeline and assigning value to your claim.
A comprehensive vision of long-term medical care costs may involve a life expectancy analysis.
This medical assessment estimates the years one may live following a car accident, resulting in life-altering injuries. It considers the severity of injuries, age, and overall health. It also factors in potential long-term complications following injuries sustained in a collision.
A life expectancy analysis is necessary for calculating and seeking compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident.
Demanding Reasonable Compensation
An invaluable benefit of hiring a car accident lawyer to represent your long-term medical care claim is their honed negotiation skills. Negotiations ensure maximum compensation is secured in long-term medical care cases.
Your lawyer will present a detailed demand letter to the insurance company, outlining the full extent of your damages. They will advocate for a reasonable settlement covering current and future medical expenses.
Litigating Your Case in Court
When negotiations fail, or other circumstances warrant filing a civil lawsuit, your attorney will litigate your case in court. They must present the case’s evidence before a judge and jury to determine whether to award compensation for long-term medical care and other damages.
Litigation is usually a last resort because insurance companies and attorneys want to avoid the additional time and costs of a trial.
Additional Damages You May Recover Compensation for After a Car Accident
In addition to compensation for long-term medical care after a car accident, your lawyer will comprehensively evaluate your claim for other losses. This process involves assessing economic and non-economic damages.
Economic Damages
The economic damages in your car accident case are the monetary losses verifiable on paper. These losses can be easily proven with receipts, invoices, billing, and bank statements.
Economic damages your attorney may recover include:
- Healthcare Costs: Besides long-term medical care, your lawyer will demand insurers compensate for all healthcare-related costs suffered due to the car accident.
- Property Damages: All property damages caused by the car accident are recoverable financial losses in your settlement. These damages commonly include vehicle repairs or replacement, rental car costs, and cell phones.
- Lost Earnings: The demand letter will calculate and itemize all income losses from the car accident. Lost earnings may include income, benefits, and other income like tips and commissions. Your attorney will work with economists to determine your diminished or lost earning capacity when injuries are severe.
You should supply your lawyer with pay stubs, tax returns, and other financial documents demonstrating income loss to prove lost earnings. Obtaining an income loss statement from your employer can help—especially regarding lost bonuses and promotion opportunities.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are the intangible losses you incurred from the car accident. They do not come with a receipt and need an experienced lawyer to prove.
Non-economic damages include:
- Chronic pain conditions and life-long pain management
- Scarring and disfigurement
- Physical impairment
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—only recoverable when physical injuries accompany the condition
- Decreased quality of life
- Sexual dysfunction
- Cognitive issues
- Loss of society and companionship
- Shortened life expectancy
- Worsening of existing injuries and conditions
Non-economic damages are documented in detailed medical records and post-accident journals. Remain consistent and detailed when making entries. Your attorney will also use expert witness testimony to establish non-economic damages.
Schedule Your Free Consultation
Most car accident attorneys work for contingency, requiring no upfront or out-of-pocket costs to retain services.
Instead, they will recover a disclosed percentage of your settlement only if they win your case. Consult an experienced personal injury lawyer to seek compensation for long-term medical care and other damages.