Bernard Tully Personal Injury Lawyer. Phone: 412-281-8700
Defense medical exams (DME) are known in the plaintiff’s bar as defense medical exams because they’re oriented against you. These are commonly used in workers comp cases to get an injured party back to work whether they’re able to or not. The defense will make claims saying the injury wasn’t caused by this accident because it predated it or that the injured party has recovered completely from the accident and there are no lingering issues.
Defense Medical Exams (DME)
The defense insurance companies are smart and always go to the same doctors. When talking with the doctors, they may imply: “If you say this is what the diagnosis is, here is some money. Also, if you want more or don’t do this, I may go to another doctor.” Therefore, some defense medical exams are sort of a facade. The defense doctors may already know the conclusions they are going to make before they perform a physical exam on you. To normalize it, they have to go through the motions so they can write their report and have some “legitimacy”.
The issue is that this is a massive money-making machine for defense doctors. On average they may charge about four thousand dollars per exam and it usually only takes 30 minutes to complete. Unfortunately, once these doctors write their report, they hand it over to the defense insurance company who says the medical doctor decided your injury has nothing to do with the accident. Then it doesn’t force them to pay you much if anything.
It can be hard going into these appointments because you want to trust some of these doctors. Nonetheless, some doctors do the exams in bad faith already knowing that they’re going to say that your injury is either completely healed or it had nothing to do with the accident. So, this is how they use defense medical exams to give you cheap offers or send you back to work when you’re not ready. Therefore, you need an attorney that can combat that and when you get a chance to cross-examine the doctor you have a chance.
Our main focus is honesty. We always preach it. We are passionate about trying to help any injured person or family member with their case. Questions about the blog? CALL US!
Bernard Tully Allegheny County Defense Medical Exam Lawyer. Phone: 412-281-8700 and 1-800-518-0050