Insurance Adjustors and Your Health History

Dealing with insurance companies after an accident is often nearly as stressful as the accident itself. They hit you with question after question, only for you to analyze everything you said once you hung up the phone. While it is important to cooperate with the accident investigation and ensure that everyone has the information they need to proceed, that doesn’t mean you need to hurt your own claim in the process.

Learn more about why insurance agents may want access to your health history and how it could impact you. When you’re ready to move forward with your personal injury claim, call Gardner Law Group at 228-436-6555.

Ask Yourself, “What Will They Do With This Information?”

First, it’s important to note that this all relates to conversations with the other party’s insurance provider. Your insurance adjuster is on your side, while the other party’s insurance adjuster is out for their own client and bottom line. When they ask you to sign a form allowing them access to your medical records, think about what means. How will they use that information?

A lot of the information they access will be directly accident-related. They may want to look at what testing was done after the crash and the results of your diagnostic testing. They may also dig a bit into your treatment plan and how well you have complied with it. In this, they may look for ways they can begin to chip away at your claim—perhaps you missed an important appointment, or the doctor suggested another factor may have contributed to your injuries.

However, giving them unfettered access to your health history also allows them to dig much deeper than just your current medical needs. They can look at past surgeries, medical diagnoses, and injuries. They can use this information to try to weaken your claim and limit the amount of compensation they offer you.

How Your Medical History is Necessary for Your Claim

Your health history—or at least certain components of it—is important for both insurance companies to access during your personal injury claim. They do need a full understanding of your injuries and how they are related to the accident before they can offer fair compensation. That doesn’t mean that unlimited health history access is necessary—instead, it’s important to ensure that the other party’s insurance company only has access to what is relevant and necessary.

In some cases, information on preexisting injuries or illnesses is relevant to the case at hand. If the accident exacerbated an old injury, you may be able to recover compensation for this additional damage.

They will also need to look at how your injuries were diagnosed, what treatments were recommended, and how your injuries have progressed over time. This type of information may also include future treatment recommendations and expectations regarding your recovery.

How Your Health History Can Damage Your Claim

The main reason to limit access to your health history is to prevent the insurance company from using it in an unethical way. If they can argue that your injuries are actually the result of a preexisting injury, they may shift blame from their client onto whatever previous injuries you’ve suffered—and that means less compensation for you. In some cases, they may go as far as to offer you zero compensation because of what they find in your medical history. If your health history has sensitive information, that may further complicate your claim and give them leverage they can use against you during negotiations.

Beyond the ways your health history can damage your claim, it’s simply unnecessary to give an insurance adjuster free access to your medical records. That information is private and confidential—if you wouldn’t let any other random person go digging through your medical data, don’t allow the insurance company to do so either.

What You Should Do Instead

Instead, talk to an attorney about your next steps. Your attorney can provide the information the insurance company needs while shielding the rest of your medical history. As an added benefit, having all communication go through your attorney also prevents you from accidentally damaging your case in other ways.

Choose Gardner Law Group for Your Personal Injury Claim

Your personal injury attorney at Gardner Law Group will advocate for you throughout the entirety of your personal injury claim. Get started right away—just call our Pascagoula office at 228-762-6555, call our Biloxi office at 228-436-6555, or send us a message online.