After being injured, you will face a decision: do you go to urgent care, or do you head to the emergency room? You might not know this, but your choice can actually affect your personal injury case. As a personal injury lawyer can explain, insurance companies are looking at the severity of your injuries, how quickly you sought treatment, and how credible your injury symptoms are. To do this, insurance companies start by looking at where you sought medical treatment after your injury.
ER Versus Urgent Care
It is essential to know the differences between these two types of medical care. The ER is a hospital-based department that treats serious or life-threatening conditions. They generally operate 24/7, with specialists on hand to treat the most severe injuries, and have advanced imaging, such as MRIs, available. Documentation from an ER signals that your injury was very urgent and severe after your accident.
An urgent care is typically a walk-in medical facility for non-life-threatening injuries. One reason you may seek urgent care over the ER is that urgent care facilities tend to have shorter wait times. However, they also have less access to advanced medical imaging and specialists. Although your injuries may be severe, a trip to urgent care might communicate to insurance companies that your injuries were not that bad.
How Medical Records Are Evaluated
The insurance adjuster assigned to your case will examine the timing of your treatment (how quickly you sought it after the accident), the type of facility you visited (ER versus urgent care), what diagnostic tests were completed (MRIs versus a simple blood test), and physician’s notes. These notes tend to have data on intake, tests, all the doctors involved in your case, and discharge notes for how you were advised to care for your injuries upon leaving the medical facility. The emergency room tends to have longer, more comprehensive notes on your case, while urgent care tends towards briefer notes that might not lend to a sense of urgency around your injuries. Additionally, more detailed notes can buoy your case and leave no room for doubt, while shorter, less comprehensive notes can lead to issues with your insurance claim.
Again, most people rush to an ER if they have extremely severe injuries, which can significantly strengthen your personal injury case. As our friends at Cohen & Cohen can share, delayed visits to urgent care may raise questions. The longer you take to visit a medical facility, no matter which one, the more opportunities insurance companies have to claim that your medical visit was for issues acquired outside of your accident from unrelated events. This is not to say you should not visit an urgent care, but it is to inform you of how insurance companies view these visits.
Medical records are truly the backbone of a personal injury case. The takeaway here is that no matter which you choose to visit, the emergency room or urgent care, you must push for very detailed notes on your case. Notes from providers on how severe your injuries are, how long recovery will take, and what ongoing medical care is necessary will all help your case. Contact an attorney near you if you have been injured and need legal assistance.
