How To Get Your Bills Paid While Awaiting an Injury Settlement

One of the most difficult things to manage after a car accident is taking care of the medical bills if you or a passenger were hurt in the accident. If you have to make a trip to the emergency room immediately after the accident or seek regular chiropractic care or physical therapy, those bills can start to accumulate quickly. This is an area that a personal injury attorney and his staff can assist with. They can track the bills and their payments and make sure that every entity involved in your health care has been notified and billed in the right order to get you the maximum benefits. Their assistance will allow you to focus on the important business of healing and also keep you out of collections. #1 Work Comp The first thing to determine your accident. If you were driving a company car, running a work related errand when the accident occurred this may be the case. If so then a work comp claim would need to be filed. This would be the first line of coverage that would pay your medical bills. However most auto accidents do not involve worker's comp coverage but rather the driver's PIP insurance coverage on their own vehicle. #2 PIP PIP stands for personal injury protection. This is the medical coverage that is required by law on every vehicle registered in the state of Utah. This coverage is usually the first line of coverage in most car accidents. The most common amount of coverage is $3,000. This amount would be the maximum that the policy would pay out for medical expenses in the event of an injury from a car accident. This allows everyone the opportunity to seek proper medical attention after an accident and not have to worry and wait to see if they will have some sort of coverage from the at-fault insurance company. Your own insurance company will pay your medical bills first and then seek reimbursement from the at-fault driver's insurance. Once the $3,000 limit is reached then other types of insurance that you carry will kick in. They will not kick-in before the limit on your own auto policy is maxed out. Another important fact to understand about your PIP coverage is that the bills that are received by them are paid on a first come, first serve basis. So if the chiropractic office is quicker at submitting the bill to your insurance company, then they will get paid before the emergency room. Whatever bills are left unpaid when the PIP runs out will need to be submitted to your health insurance for payment. #3 Medicaid After the PIP coverage has been exhausted, your insurance company will provide you with a PIP exhaust letter to prove that your PIP has been used up. This will be submitted to your health insurance provider as they are next in line to pay for your medical bills. If you have Medicaid or Medicare, you or your attorney will have to notify them as soon as your auto claim has been filed. This is in case any of your health care providers bill Medicare or Medicaid first, before your PIP is exhausted. Medicaid and Medicare need to be given notice that there was an accident so they can deny those claims. Again, once the PIP coverage is all used up, then the Medicaid or Medicare will cover those bills. #4 Health Insurance Private health insurance will be next in line after the PIP runs out for those who do not have Medicaid or Medicare benefits. Again, your private health care provider should have been notified when the accident occurred so they could deny payments for medical expenses until the PIP is used up. If you failed to contact them, they usually send a questionnaire to you after they receive the first bill that appears to be the result of an auto accident. You may wonder why your own health insurance would pay your expenses when your injuries are actually the other driver's fault. That is a good question and the answer is that your private health insurance carrier will subrogate against the at-fault insurance company to collect what they paid out back. Your own PIP insurance as well as Medicaid and Medicare will do the same. It is helpful to you if your health insurance pays your bills initially though because sometimes it takes months or even years to settle a claim and get that money back. Payments by your PIP and health insurance keep you out of collections for medical bills until your claim is settled. #5 Attorney Liens On occasion there are medical bills that are still outstanding after the PIP has run out and health insurance won't cover them for one reason or another. Maybe the policy doesn't cover chiropractic care or the physical therapy visits have been used up or maybe the deductible is just too high for the claimant to pay out-of-pocket. In these situations your attorney may be able to provide an attorney lien for the medical provider. This lien would provide assurance to the provider that the bill will be paid first when and if settlement in the case is reached. This allows them to keep providing the services that you need to recover without sending you to collections. However the patient still has the responsibility to pay the bills if the settlement is not adequate to pay the outstanding bills. #6 Out-of Pocket Finally, after all of the above mentioned avenues for payment are exhausted, then the claimant will need to make payments on the balance of the bills. This is a last resort and only used if it is necessary to keep you out of collections and still able to seek treatment from your medical providers. Your attorney will do all that they can to ensure that this amount is as little as possible and hopefully non-existent. Any out-of-pocket expense that you do incur will be recorded by your attorney and will be reimbursed when your case is settled. Hopefully, this article helped you understand how the payment process works in a personal injury case. A personal injury attorney can answer any additional questions that you may have.