The value of a personal injury claim increases, if the claimant has shown a consistency of care. Consistency of care means a treatment schedule that lacks obvious gaps.
What is a gap?
One gap is the time between the accident and the start of treatment.
A second gap is the space between the different appointments with the treating physician.
What is an adjuster’s view of a gap?
In the adjuster’s mind, a gap sends this message: The injuries are not as severe as claimed. Claimants that keep a journal can help a Personal Injury Lawyer in Edmonton to explain the reason for one or more gaps. A journal can provide a lawyer with useful details.
What are some legitimate reasons for a gap?
The claimant might become ill during the period of time between 2 appointments. As stated above, a journal should highlight the existence of such a situation. The claimant might have undergone surgery. This would certainly be a legitimate reason, if the claimant had been given an implanted device, in order to treat the accident-related injury. Such a device can become infected. All infected devices must be removed and replaced.
Indeed, an implanted device does not really treat the injury. It simply controls the condition, and allows it to be monitored. The monitoring process needs to be an ongoing process. Perhaps the claimant was a parent and that parent’s child got sick. Then the claimant/parent had to stay home with that sick child. That could explain the gap in the treatment schedule.
Maybe the claimant’s wife was pregnant, and the baby chose to enter the world on the day of his father’s appointment. Claimants cannot fight acts of nature. A mix-up in paperwork could cause a gap. That is what happened to one woman, an employee that had reported an injury at work. She met with her specialist, who arranged for an MRI; he then took time to examine the results of the MRI.
For some reason, the doctor’s secretary was of the opinion that the doctor had failed to find any problem with the examined patient. Furthermore, that secretary shared her incorrect opinion with the HR Department in the injured employee’s company.
The HR Department was about ready to close the case. Then the doctor came through with his diagnosis. The MRI had indicated the problem. Yet the diagnosed problem had to be explained to the head of the injured employee’s company. All of those events filled up a fair amount of time. In other words, they created a gap in the treatment schedule. Fortunately, the paralegal that was handling the case managed to smooth things out to the adjuster’s satisfaction. Eventually, the employee recovered and managed to return to work.