calculate future medical cost

How Future Medical Costs Are Calculated After a Car Accident

Medical care is often the most expensive part of a personal injury claim. Fortunately, it’s usually fairly easy to calculate. As long as you keep track of your bills and the money you spend on other health-related items, you can prove what your injuries have cost you.

But what if your medical bills are never going to stop? If there’s no end date to the care and treatment you’ll need, figuring out fair compensation is a lot more difficult. However, you do not have to do it alone. With the help of the team at Turner, Onderdonk, Kimbrough & Howell, you can fight for the compensation you truly deserve. Call us at our Chatom office at 251-336-3411 or our Bay Minette office at 251-336-3697 to set up a consultation right now.

Some Injuries Stay with You

It’s easiest to calculate medical expenses when your injury heals fully. Unfortunately, some accident victims aren’t that lucky. While they see some improvement in their progress, they will never return to the level of health or mobility they enjoyed before the accident.

In many of these cases, they will need ongoing care for the rest of their lives. They may need treatments for ongoing pain, to prevent further loss of mobility, to check for complications as time goes on, and for nursing care expenses.

How do you know when it’s time to start looking into future medical expenses? You’ll want to find your point of maximum medical improvement. This is the point at which your doctor says that any future improvement is not going to happen. For many people, MMI means a full recovery.

For those with severe or catastrophic injuries, MMI is often short of a full recovery. Before a doctor will declare that you have reached your MMI, they will try every treatment they can reasonably attempt to see if it makes a difference in your progress.

What Are Future Medical Expenses?

Future medical expenses are complex and varied, which makes it even harder to calculate them accurately. Generally, anything that could be included in current medical costs can also be included in future medical costs. Examples include:

  • Hospitalization
  • Surgical treatment
  • Follow-up diagnostic testing and assessment
  • Mental health treatment
  • Medication
  • Physical and occupational therapy
  • Rehabilitative care
  • Adaptive equipment
  • In-home treatment
  • Nursing home care

The type of care you need to plan for depends largely on your diagnosis and how much your health is permanently affected. Consider, for example, someone with a severe traumatic brain injury after a car crash. After undergoing substantial treatment and therapy, their doctors declare that further progress is extremely unlikely. In the future, they will need ongoing physical and occupational therapy to prevent the loss of skills they have and to prevent future loss of mobility.

They may need funds for wheelchair upgrades and replacements for the rest of their lives, as well as Hoyer lifts and other mobility aids. They may also need around-the-clock care to ensure that they get help with toileting, changing clothing, and range-of-motion exercises.

Calculating Medical Costs

Figuring out how much medical care will cost is essentially trying to hit a moving target. Not only do you have to guess what type of care you’ll need in the future, but you’ll also have to think about how much that care will likely cost.

Expert testimony is extremely helpful in this area. Medical experts may be able to explain the type of care you’ll need, while economic experts may be able to explain how costs are likely to increase in the future.

A big part of predicting future care is looking at past and present care. Your treatment plan, prognosis, and medical reports can all be used to estimate what type of care you may need for the rest of your life and how much it will cost you.

Contact Turner, Onderdonk, Kimbrough & Howell Now

When future medical costs are on the line, it’s incredibly important to have an experienced personal injury attorney who can advocate for you and get you what you deserve. Your attorney at Turner, Onderdonk, Kimbrough & Howell will fight aggressively to get the settlement or jury award you deserve. Set up a time to talk to our team now by calling us at our Chatom office at 251-336-3411 or our Bay Minette office at 251-336-3697 or by sending us a message online

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