Personal Injury Care Centennial, CO

What Personal Injury Case Includes

Your case is personal injury if you were injured and somebody else may be responsible. One of the most common cases is car crashes. The other cases include:

• Car and truck accidents
• Workplace injuries
• Pedestrian and bicycle accidents
• Sports and recreation injuries
• Slip, trip, and fall injuries
• Motorcycle accidents
• Rideshare passenger injuries
• Premises and property injuries

These are different causes but they have the same problem. A strong force hits your body and affects your soft tissue, spine, and nerves that run through it. This is where chiropractic care truly stands out.

How to Get Better and Obtain Proper Documents

When you get injured, you have two jobs. One is to get better. And the other one is documenting your injury. Unfortunately, most people miss the second one until it’s too late. But you won’t be properly compensated without proper documentation.

An adjuster or an attorney will open your file and ask what was wrong with you. This adjuster will investigate when the injury started and whether it is permanent. The answers to those questions are in your medical records. It’s not what you have remembered or how you felt.

This is the reason a thorough examination and imaging on day one is vital to your injury case. You must get treated and create the record. Remember that you only have one chance to create it early.

How Personal Injury is Documented?

Standard x-rays are common but they have limitations. You can’t see ligaments on an x-ray because only an MRI can scan a ligament directly. A collision or a hard fall produces ligament damage. Unfortunately, it is often undocumented. Most of the time, the patient is told that nothing is wrong.

Motion x-rays can solve this issue. In our Centennial chiropractic office, we image the spine through movement and how the vertebrae travel. We will know that there’s damage on your ligament when a segment of your spine moves further than it should. This excess motion is an indication that the ligaments holding that segment have been damaged, even though we don’t see the ligament itself.

To get a fuller clinical walkthrough of this, please check our auto accident care page.

How the Billing of Personal Injury Case Works

If you have an attorney

We send all bills and records directly to your attorney’s office. They take care of those documents. You won’t be handling those paperwork yourself. The documentation, including the motion x-rays, is what they need to file a personal injury case.

If you don’t have an attorney

Most patients of personal injury don’t have an attorney. Many Colorado auto policies carry medical payments coverage that can go toward treatment, regardless of who was at fault. When you come into our office for your treatment, you should bring that policy and we’ll look into it before your care starts.

We work with personal injury attorneys across the Denver metro. Our team is happy to point you toward someone if you wish to hire an attorney. It’s your decision. If your situation won’t allow you to hire an attorney, we can lay out payment plans.

Injuries We Treat

Soft tissue damage is an often complain of our patients who come through the door. Unfortunately, this damage is not apparent after the injury. Its symptoms are slow to show. You may feel fine at the scene but when the symptoms show up three days later, you feel terrible.

• Whiplash
• Low back pain
• Post injury headaches
• Numbness and tingling
• Shoulder injuries
• Neck pain and lost motion
• Herniated and bulging discs
• Radiating pain into arms or legs
• Concussion and mild TBI
• Knee injuries

Dr. Tony holds an IMPACT certification for concussion protocol. This matter after any injury that involves a head strike. Concussion is more common in falls than people realize. Care may include adjustments, spinal decompression when discs are involved or SoftWave therapy for stubborn joint and soft tissue damage.

What Personal Injury Recovery Looks Like

It will be a slow improvement. A lot of damage happens in one second of impact. But tissue heals on its own. You can’t speed it up.

You should notice significant improvement by 12 visits. The damage may not be completely fixed. But it’s getting better. This can fall in the four to six week range. To get back to 100 percent, it can take between 20 and 26 treatments. However, the numbers can go up or down depending on your pre-existing conditions, age, and the severity of the impact. In Dr. Tony’s experience, younger patients respond quicker.

However, the plan is not locked. You will be reevaluated every week. If your case is not improving around the 8 to 12 mark, Dr. Tony will tell you and refer you out, instead of continuously billing you. We don’t offer a 60-visit package here.

Three Important Things That Weaken Your Medical Record

From a treatment records standpoint, these are the patterns that make a personal injury harder to document.

• Waiting weeks to undergo examination: The longer you wait before getting a medical examination, the harder it becomes to prove that the injury is the result of the event. What’s worse is that an acute problem can turn into chronic problems.
• Long gaps in the middle of care: When you stop your treatment for a month but come back, it leaves a hole in your record. This can be difficult to explain later.
• Mentioning only your worst symptom: Most providers don’t assemble the full picture. They simply want to focus on one or two things a patient brings up. Hence, you should say everything to Dr. Tony, even the small parts.

Please note that we’re not attorneys. We don’t offer legal advice.

When You Need to Go to the Hospital First

Chiropractic care is not the first treatment for everything. This type of care is mostly ideal for injuries in the soft tissue and the spine. You should get medical care or evaluation first if:

• A fracture or dislocation is suspected.
• You experience shortness of breath, balance problems, slurred speech or lost consciousness.
• You’re losing bowel or bladder control
• The pain is unbearable.
• Numbness has spread into your face. This is necessary so that stroke is ruled out.

You can come see us if serious injuries are ruled out.

Personal Injury Care FAQs