An emergency room report may seem like an objective and straightforward document when it comes to personal injury claims since it provides all parties with information on the course of treatment taken, your physical state on contact with medical personnel, and other pertinent details. This document may seem uncontestable given its objective nature, but given the adversarial nature of personal injury law and the fact that insurance companies incentivize their adjusters to pay you, the injured individual the lowest payout possible, this document may be used by them in ways you never imagined.

At its very core, the purpose of a personal injury claim is to compensate and make whole an individual who was injured due to the negligent actions of another party.

The law seeks to not victimize the injured party as it understands or precludes that as long as you are able to demonstrate fault or negligence on the defendant’s part as well as show the link between your injuries and their actions or lack thereof, you have a valid case and deserve to be compensated.

However, the machinations of the insurance company or the defense’s legal team usually know no end, and they will go over even official medical documents in an effort to show that your injuries weren’t as severe as you made them out to be for the purposes of minimizing your claim payout. At McCready Law, we are privy to all the underhanded tricks played by the insurance company and are ready to defend your integrity and that of your medical documents so you receive maximum compensation – read on to find out just exactly how we do this.

Are you looking for the best injury attorney? Please call us NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about your legal options for justice and compensation. The experienced injury lawyers at McCready Law bring to the table over 90 YEARS of combined legal experience, where we’ve helped tens of thousands of injured individuals seek compensation after getting injured due to the negligent acts of other parties and even large corporations.

To date, we have been able to recover over $260 million and counting for our clients, and our incomparable success can be attributed to operating strategies that are different from those of other law firms such as personally handling claims as tenured attorneys and not shunting them over to legal assistants and paralegals as is often seen in most law firms, working closely with the client in an open and collaborative manner to ensure all possible weaknesses in the case are patched up.

On top of that, we usually upon the expertise of world-renowned experts such as top physicians, celebrated investigators, and experienced accident reconstruction experts and forensic professionals, all done in an effort to build a robust case replete with evidence and objective opinions that prove the other party indeed acted from a place of negligence, thereby leading to your injuries. We are also not afraid to litigate claims should we believe that doing so may get you maximum compensation, particularly if the insurance company is not amenable to good faith negotiations.

We run a bilingual firm (hablamos Español), and we take on all cases on a contingency fee basis, which simply means that there are ZERO UPFRONT FEES for the duration of the processing of your claim, as we only levy our fees at the end of the suit, and only if we’ve recovered compensation on your behalf. If you or a loved one got injured due to someone else’s negligence, please call us NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about your legal options for justice and compensation – our intake team is standing by.

The Role of an ER Report in a Personal Injury Lawsuit

Generally speaking, an emergency report is a record of a patient’s condition at a specific moment in time following an accident. You are usually assessed by ER doctors or nurses and are stabilized if your condition is critical, as the aim is to ensure the immediate elimination of any threats to your life.

An ER environment is a high-pressure environment, and this urgency is usually reflected in the documentation. An ER report is usually objective, concise, and summarizes in very few words what is medically apparent and the presence of injuries that need intervention.

To this end, ER staff will prioritize any apparent or life-threatening injuries such as head trauma, spinal cord damage, or internal injuries, but they will not detail or document any subtle or soft tissue injuries, latent pain, and so on. In addition, you are most likely going to be in shock or have adrenaline coursing through your body, which may make it difficult for you to articulate all your symptoms or the extent of your pain.

ER patients also have the unfortunate habit of downplaying any discomfort as they want to avoid any invasive procedures or just want to be treated and released so they can go back home and rest. Lastly, there isn’t much time to write a detailed or comprehensive medical report at the ER compared to a primary care visit, where discussions are much more nuanced and capture every ache, pain and condition.

How the Defense Team May Use Your ER Report Against You

Here are some of the ways in which defense attorneys can use ER reports to serve their own narrative for the purposes of minimizing injury severity:

1. The terms “no acute distress” or “patient appears comfortable” which in ER terms mean that you aren’t exhibiting any immediate or visible signs of a life-threatening emergency or severe pain, don’t mean that you weren’t injured or are pain-free; it simply means that you are stable and not in any immediate distress requiring critical intervention. However, defense counsel will argue that, given the fact that you weren’t in any acute distress, your injuries weren’t significant. That said, the goal of the ER doctors isn’t to perform a full medical assessment, but they are meant to ensure you are stable.
2. The ER report may indicate that you were “ambulatory at the scene” or “walked into ER”. Your gross mobility is assessed by ER upon first contact, but this doesn’t mean you weren’t injured or weren’t experiencing pain; immediately after an accident, you usually have adrenaline coursing through your body which makes it possible for you to walk even despite your injuries. The defense team, however, will indicate that the report stated you were ambulatory at the scene, ergo, your injuries couldn’t have been severe enough to prevent basic mobility. We will counter this as a law firm by stressing that walking isn’t equivalent to not being injured or free of pain. We will work with experts to explain how the effects of shock and adrenaline can enable one to walk even with pain and serious injuries, and show how certain injuries such as mild TBI and internal injuries present with delayed symptoms.
3. An ER report may also not detail any specific diagnoses or may even have negative findings on particular tests such as a CT scan. This is because the most severe issues are handled first before moving on to other medical concerns. In many cases, one issue such as a laceration may overshadow telltale symptoms of a deeper underlying issue such as numbness which may later develop into spinal cord injury since these pressing issues may have immediate consequences such as excessive bleeding due to lacerations which must be handled immediately. Therefore, even when the defense states that the MRI of your brain was negative, this doesn’t mean that you didn’t suffer a concussion or TBI since these aren’t chief complaints in an ER setting, and subsequent medical records from neurologists, orthopedists, urologists and so on will document and diagnose these conditions after the initial ER visit which usually proves gradual manifestation or delayed onset.

Best Nationwide Injury Law Firm – Call Us Today!

We understand that all of this may seem confusing and even adversarial, but this is why we exist as a law firm – to defend and counter any frivolous explanations by the defense and their attempts to downplay and discredit your injuries. Please give us a call NOW at (314) 481-63338 regardless of where you are in the country so we can assess your claim and provide you with timely legal assistance. Remember, the call is 100% FREE, and there is no legal obligation or nothing to sign. Thanks for choosing McCready Law, and we look forward to serving you.