Understanding how to seek compensation for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury is vital before filing an insurance claim or lawsuit. Otherwise, you’ll incur future healthcare expenses that aren’t your financial responsibility. Unfortunately, unexpected and uncompensated long-term medical care costs may impose significant financial hardship later in life. Speak to a reputable, experienced pedestrian accident attorney to ensure optimal claim valuation for long-term medical care. Schedule a free case evaluation today.
Pedestrian Injuries Requiring Long-Term Medical Care
Long-term injuries are medical conditions with lingering symptoms and physical limitations. They include permanent impairments and disabilities. However, you may also sustain a long-term injury without permanent disability. Common pedestrian injuries requiring long-term medical care include:
- Loss of limb(s)
- Nerve damage
- Scarring or disfigurement
- Compound or multiple bone fractures
- Spinal cord injuries (SCIs), such as partial or complete paralysis
- Back injuries (non-spinal cord) causing chronic pain and permanent disability
- Internal injuries, including organ damage to the liver, spleen, lungs, or kidney
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), including cognitive impairments, motor function problems, seizures, speech and language difficulties, and mood and personality changes
Because they are exposed to the full impact of a collision, pedestrians often experience a combination of severe injuries requiring long-term medical care. Detailed medical records with physician notes, prescribed treatments, and responses to treatments help establish the need for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury. The type of long-term medical care needed after a pedestrian accident depends on injury severity and assistance needs.
Long-Term Medical Care After a Pedestrian Injury
Depending on the severity of your injuries or disability, long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury may involve a range of treatment needs and facility requirements. Long-term medical care may involve diagnostic, rehabilitative, and therapeutic costs. Injured pedestrians may receive medical care in long-term care facilities such as the following:
- Home Health: Home health care, also called domiciliary, personal, or social care, is health or supportive care provided in the injured pedestrian’s home. Standard home health care services include doctor or nursing care. They also entail physical, occupational, and speech therapy, medical social services, and care from home health aides.
- Rehabilitation Centers: Rehabilitation centers are facilities where injured pedestrians can undergo therapy and treatment to manage pain, regain physical function and strength, and address psychological impacts. The purpose of these facilities is to return an injured pedestrian to as much of their previous ability level as possible. It may include psychological counseling, physical therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy.
- Assisted Living Facilities: Assisted living facilities provide residential settings for injured pedestrians. They help with daily tasks such as eating, grooming, bathing, and dressing. Because assisted living facilities don’t provide extensive medical care, they are ideal for accident victims with moderate injuries.
- Nursing Homes: Nursing homes bear similarities to assisted living facilities. However, they also provide 24-hour monitoring and medical care. They treat injured pedestrians recovering from surgery or with chronic conditions. Nursing homes are ideal for pedestrians with injuries requiring 24/7 care.
Long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury can become costly quickly—especially concerning in-patient care. The expense of long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury is determined by several factors, including the type of medical care, where it’s provided, and how long it’s needed. Have an experienced attorney investigate and estimate these costs with the expert analysis of relevant healthcare professionals and vocational economists. You don’t want the unexpected and astronomical expense of financing them later.
Seeking Compensation for Long-Term Medical Care After a Pedestrian Injury
Your long-term medical care needs largely depend on the severity of your injuries, medical history, and future prognosis. Knowing what the future holds is impossible. However, your lawyer can work with medical professionals to better understand what to expect before estimating compensation for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury. Areas where they may identify a need to compensate for long-term medical care needs are as follows:
- Medical Expenses: The medical costs associated with emergency services, hospitalizations, surgeries, physical therapy, speech therapy, and other ongoing health care are considered when calculating long-term medical care.
- Prescription Costs: The costs conducive to a lifetime of pharmaceutical care add up. Your attorney and healthcare professionals will factor in the expenses for pain management and other prescription medication needs for your long-term injuries or disabilities after a pedestrian accident.
- Future Medical Costs: Catastrophic injuries, such as TBIs, SCIs, and internal injuries, often result in permanent disability that requires long-term medical care. Healthcare professionals, vocational economists, and your attorney will review the extent of these injuries to ensure adequate estimates for compensation for future medical costs, including for in-patient facilities.
- Therapy Expenses: The costs of ongoing therapy, counseling, or psychiatric services after a pedestrian accident are compensable damages.
- Assisted Living Devices: Medical assistive device expenses are calculable and include prosthetic limbs, braces, walkers, wheelchairs, hearing aids, and vision assistive devices. They may also entail portable oxygen concentrators (POCs) and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines.
- Home Renovations: Estimates for home renovations may calculated for disabled pedestrian accident victims. In-home modifications—such as widening doorways, lowering countertops, building ramps, installing chair lifts, and renovating accessible bathrooms to accommodate mobility—are all viable long-term damages.
- Basic Assistance Care: Those costs can be calculated when injured pedestrians require basic assistance care or a homemaker. Basic assistance care is non-medical support to help with everyday activities, such as bathing or showering, dressing, eating, mobility, and toileting. It generally does not involve administering medicine or providing medical care, but it can include meal prep and running errands, such as grocery shopping.
- Pain and Suffering: Your pain and suffering following a pedestrian injury is non-economic damage that your attorney may seek compensation for with long-term medical care. It provides monetary value to discomfort, physical pain, emotional distress, mental anguish, and psychological trauma and is only pursuable with physical injuries.
Calculating long-term medical costs involves considering factors like age, expected lifespan, projected inflation rates, likely duration of care needed, costs of different long-term medical care options, and potential health concerns and conditions. The geographical location of the accident victim may also significantly impact the costs of long-term medical care after a pedestrian accident injury.
Other Damages You May Seek Compensation for After a Pedestrian Injury
In addition to current, ongoing, and long-term medical care after a pedestrian accident, you may seek compensation for other damages. Your attorney and expert witnesses will analyze and calculate your compensatory damages to maximize compensation, which consists of economic and non-economic damages, including:
- Lost Income: You can claim income losses when severe injuries warrant missing work. Lost income includes income, salary, non-salary commissions and tips, sick time and vacation pay, lost benefits, and promotions. When injured pedestrians cannot return to work at full or any capacity, their attorney will work with vocational or forensic economists to calculate diminished or lost earning capacity and loss of future earnings.
- Property Damages: Property on your person that was destroyed in the accident are losses for which you may seek compensation after a pedestrian injury. Personal property items generally include cell phones, clothing, jewelry, smartwatches, headphones, bags and purses, shoes, glasses, sunglasses, laptops, and other portable electronic devices.
- Loss of Consortium: A loss of consortium is a non-economic damage that encompasses losing the intangible benefits of relationships. It usually pertains to spouses, partners, children, and parents. It entails a loss of love, affection, companionship, guidance, and support. For spouses and romantic partners, it includes the loss of sexual intimacy.
- A Loss of Enjoyment of Life: The loss of enjoyment of life refers to the diminished or inability to participate in experiences, hobbies, sports, and other activities that once brought joy and fulfillment, such as socializing, going to parties and gatherings, traveling, hiking, and other extracurricular activities.
- Lost Years: When you receive a shortened life expectancy, your medical team, lawyer, and other experts will analyze and calculate the years of healthy life lost due to disability (YLD) and demand compensation for their loss.
If you believe you have other damages that aren’t listed, ask your pedestrian accident lawyer about them. Each accident and injury is unique in its circumstances. State jurisdiction, accident type, and whether a party is a minor or adult influence what damages you may seek compensation for after a pedestrian injury and the timeframe you have to operate within. While no states limit economic damages, many place damage caps on non-economic damages. Your local pedestrian accident attorney can clarify local regulations and laws.
How an Attorney Will Seek Compensation for Long-Term Medical Care After a Pedestrian Injury
To seek compensation for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury, you should consult an experienced attorney. They handle cases similar to yours daily and know how to navigate the insurance claims process and legal system confidently. Lawyers will gather strong evidence, consult healthcare experts, and develop a long-term medical treatment plan.
They will also calculate long-term medical care costs and other damages before negotiating reasonable settlements. Finally, if negotiations fail, a pedestrian accident attorney may file a lawsuit to seek monetary justice for your long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury.
Gather Strong Evidence
The evidence in your case is critical for establishing a need to compensate for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury. An attorney builds their case on solid evidence they quickly gather and preserve before it is damaged or lost. Examples of strong evidence in a pedestrian injury claim seeking long-term medical care include the following:
- Detailed Medical Records: Your detailed medical records are the bread and butter in your case. They contain physician notes, lab tests, imaging scans, treatment plans, and responses to treatment. They also entail details concerning physical pain and pain management—and mental health struggles and therapy notes regarding how you’re processing the accident and life-altering injuries or disability.
- Police and Accident Reports: Obtaining the police report detailing the accident is pertinent to understanding the circumstances of the case. It’s the first legal notation of the accident and often contains witness contact information, statements, and a record of citations issued to the at-fault driver.
- Eyewitness Statements and Testimonies: Witness statements and testimonies are invaluable for establishing long-term medical care needs. They speak to how injuries or disabilities affect your daily life. Statements can be written by spouses or partners, close friends, coworkers, family, and psychologists.
- Surveillance Footage: A pedestrian accident lawyer will investigate for surveillance footage capturing the sequence of events leading up to the accident. Video footage may be collected from vehicle dashcams, traffic cams, and security cameras on businesses and homes.
Photographs of the pedestrian accident scene and your injuries immediately following the crash are also viable visual evidence. Pictures can capture vehicle placement, skid marks, and hazardous road conditions. They may also capture license plate numbers, images of potential witnesses, and other pertinent details to your case. A dated and detailed pain journal documenting intangible losses, including pain and suffering, a loss of consortium, and a loss of enjoyment of life, is valuable for establishing non-economic damages.
Consult With Healthcare Experts
Pedestrian accident lawyers work with a network of experts to assess the long-term impact of injuries and the need for long-term medical care. Your treating physicians and medical experts will develop a comprehensive long-term medical care treatment plan. A treatment plan is needed to outline expected long-term medical care and costs.
Expert witnesses provide vital insight and testimony concerning diagnosis, long-term prognosis, future healthcare needs, potential complications, and projected costs of long-term medical care. Healthcare experts include physicians, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, physical therapists, rehabilitation therapists, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, and pain management doctors.
Calculate Long-Term Medical Care Costs
It can be challenging to calculate anticipated future medical care needs and costs. You must account for facility type, geographical location, inflation, and other factors. Your lawyer and medical experts will use one of two methods to calculate future medical care costs: the total lifestyle approach or the additional expense method.
The total lifestyle approach is a more commonly used approach for accident victims with life-altering injuries or disabilities. Attorneys work with medical providers to construct a life care plan highlighting long-term medical care needs and expenses. A lawyer may use the additional expense method when an injured pedestrian is eventually expected to recover, regaining their former lifestyle without limitations. It means working with healthcare professionals to identify expenses, assess your recovery timeline, and assign monetary value to your claim or lawsuit.
Negotiate Compensation for Damages
Negotiations are a significant factor in seeking compensation for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury. It’s standard practice for insurance companies to reject the demand letter by countering with a ridiculously lowball offer and starting negotiations. An experienced lawyer is a skilled professional who will demand a reasonable settlement or file a lawsuit to secure compensation. Most long-term medical care claims are settled between insurers and attorneys without a need for litigation.
Consult a Pedestrian Accident Attorney
Speak to a reputable personal injury lawyer to determine the best action for seeking compensation for long-term medical care after a pedestrian injury. Most pedestrian accident attorneys work for contingency, requiring no out-of-pocket or upfront costs. Schedule a free case evaluation.