Why does it matter who I treat with?

Dr. DeCubellis: I think we kind of answered that a little bit, but the biggest thing is that you want to make sure you go to someone who actually works with personal injury claims.

Cases with personal injury are much different than your normal something that happens at home type of case, not only in the way that they’re actually processed, but the way that the exams have to go, the way everything is documented, but also the way that they’re paid and the way insurance works, it’s just a completely different ball game.

So you have to make sure that, obviously, it’s someone who knows what they’re doing.

Dr. DeCubellis: The other thing, though, too, is when it really comes down to that diagnosis, the big problem that I see is a lot of people, or a lot of doctors, who want to try to do PI, but don’t know how or haven’t been properly trained, they’ll come in to try to treat them as a normal case, meaning their diagnosis is like back pain, neck pain, muscle sprain or strain.

Those things don’t really offer much value in the way of the cash value, but they also don’t usually match up with how the patient ends up at the end of treatment when they reach that MMI, maximum medical improvement.

So there becomes a gap now because it’s like they were diagnosed with this, they’re treated this way, but that doesn’t add up with how they ended up, so something’s wrong, and now we have a big problem on our hands.

Atty. John: Right, no I agree. I think from my perspective, so much of my job truly is storytelling.

It’s telling the story of how you got hurt

Atty. John: And if a doctor is doing their job and doing it well, I’ve seen your notes and your notes are exemplary, they’re exactly what I wish all the other notes looked like, to be honest, and the reason is, is because back strain doesn’t tell me anything.

A back sprain just doesn’t tell me anything.

Atty. John: When you dive into the specifics and you really get into what actually is mechanically wrong here, what’s really going on in the body that is causing this pain and causing these issues, then we start to be able to actually tell a story to an insurance company, or a judge, or a jury in a way that really explains this because look, I’ve rolled my ankle and sprained my ankle, right?

I’ve also torn ligaments in my ankle, and both are technically a kind of a sprain, but one’s very different than the other, and if I had a doctor who wasn’t diagnosing me as anything but sprain or strain, I might not have ever had my ankle fixed the way I needed to so that I could run or play basketball or do whatever I needed to do again.

It’s just really, really important to dive down to specifics.