Periodically, we become aware that our clients are undertaking treatment with more than one healthcare provider for injuries they sustained in a car or truck accident. That is perfectly understandable in most instances.
Many accident victims imitially go to a hospital emergency room or patient first immediately after their crash. Generally, those entities make suggestions for follow up care with orthopedists or other specialists. Those specialists often prescribe physical therapy or diagnostic testing such as x-rays or mri's.
Thus, it is easy to accrue 3 or 4 different healthcare providers without batting an eyelash. None of these instances constitute " duplicative" treatment as contemplated in this blog's title.
Duplicative treatment is where more than one healthcare provider is essentially doing the same thing as another. A frequently seen example is a crash victim that is receiving physical therapy while also undergoing chiropractic manipulation.
Yes they are different but similar enough that insurance companies and juries often perceive that they reflect overtreatment and penalize pliantiffs for the dreaded " duplicative treatment."
There are ways to ensure that an ineffective treatment is dropped and an effective treatment is substituted. First, if a treatment isn't helping let your lawyers and primary healthcare providers know.
They can communicate this tactfully to the at-fault insurer and explain in medical reports why this is necessary.
The transition from chiropractic to physical therapy or vice versa can be tricky but if it doesn't take the doctors, lawyers and adjusters by surprise it makes it difficult to suggest that some how the treatment change is either duplication or double treating.
