Sustaining and living with a spinal cord injury can be very difficult. Understandably, the victim bears the physical and emotional burden of the injury, but the issues are compounded by the huge expenses that a victim and his or her family will need for treatment and rehabilitation. Obtaining benefits from the insurance carrier of any responsible parties will help, because treatment and rehabilitation for a spinal cord injury is often expensive.
While filing an insurance claim may look simple on paper, when interacting with insurance companies and their representatives, the victims and the victim’s family often realize that the claims process may not be so simple. However, if the accident victim and the victim’s family have a systematic approach, they may be able to deal with insurance company and representative effectively. An earlier blog post discussed the basic steps that spinal cord injury victims and their families should take in order to ensure that a claim proceeds smoothly.
In an ideal situation, the steps discussed in the previous blog post are often sufficient to claim an adequate amount of insurance. In certain cases, however, a little extra effort can ensure a successful, rightful claim. The process is simple and is a follow-up to the various basic measures that were discussed in the previous blog post.
First, the accident victim and the victim’s family should be vocal whenever they have claim-related concerns. Second, claimants should preserve all documents pertaining to the claim in order to have sufficient documentation if there is a claim-related dispute in the future. Finally, it is important for claimants to maintain records of all correspondence, including the date, purpose and insurance company representative who responded, as well as the outcome of that particular correspondence.
To further simplify the claim process, a spinal cord injury victim and the victim’s family should try their best to educate the insurance company representative about the victim’s medical condition and the particular circumstances surrounding the victim’s case. That way, the insurance company representative will be able to understand the victim’s issues and may become an advocate for the victim. By doing so, the victim and the victim’s family may be able to ensure that the claim is processed successfully.
Source: Shepherd Center, “Steps to Negotiate the Insurance Maze,” accessed May 5, 2015
