Our Past Live Events - Chirosecure Malpractice Insurance

Integrating Personal Injury Claims Into A Chiropractic Practice (and ensure your reimbursement)

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In the latest ChiroSecure Live Event, Dr. Stu Hoffman discussed with Shawn Steel about how to integrate personal injury claims into a chiropractic practice. The goal is how to effectively deal with it so that chiropractors can ensure that they get reimbursement.

The online live event particularly focused on two types of injuries that chiropractors need to be aware of to be able to take the right course of action. One type is called the MIST case; the other one is the moderate-to -severe impact.

The MIST case

MIST stands for minor impact soft tissue. The MIST case is a challenge for every chiropractor. The reason is simple – most jurisdictions won’t pay for it. Juries won’t buy it. But how do you know it’s a MIST case? It is when the accident is so small, the person involved is relatively young, and the patient is healthy.

How do you deal with MIST case? Here are some advice on how to deal it, according to Shawn Steel:

Consider a MIST case a ‘cash’ patient, meaning they pay their due by themselves; chiropractors have to be careful about accepting patients for like 30 or 40 visits as most jurisdictions won’t pay for it – juries won’t buy it.
Instead, accept them for 6 visits within a 30-day period, and move on – lawyers usually won’t touch these cases
What are some other ways to know that the injury is a MIST case? By asking these questions – Was you car drivable? Where’s your car? If it is in your parking lot, that’s the biggest clue that it’s a MIST case.
Lastly, remember, just because the accidents are minor does not mean you ignore them; you cannot do that as that is a violation of the hippocratic oath. Accept them and consider them as cash patient.

The moderate-to-severe impact

Five crucial steps to consider were highlighted in the discussion when it comes to moderate to severe personal injury.

Is your patient innocent? Always get the police report to ensure that you got a “good case”; you can get it from the lawyer and they send that to you for free
How severe is the accident? How to know that? The best indicator is when you do not see the patient’s car; ask for some photos of the damaged car as they can be used as part of your chart / report.
In connection with the second item, you have to know how badly hurt is the patient; you become the chief player, the quarterback of the case, diagnosing the patient.
Prognosis is something that you should own; it tells the insurance company what is going to be happening to the patient in the future after you release them from care. And some patients maybe facing a knee replacement. That’s a big deal. And so you have put that down. It should be an entire separate category in the personal injury report.
Patient’s disability. Disabilities is big bucks in a personal injury case; you need to consider these three: The patient’s loss of earnings, activities of daily living (ADL), and the degree of disability for evaluations.

Check out the whole video discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lLy9mmBfkQ