There are many reasons why you should Discuss Prior Medical Records With a Personal Injury Attorney.
Dennis Hernandez explains why you should discuss your prior medical records with your personal injury attorney.
There are several advantages to having all medical records relating to a personal injury case:
It lets both sides look at the injuries and the validity of a particular case;
It shows proof that the injuries actually happened;
It can help estimate damages caused by the person at fault;
It give a doctor a way to look at the past to figure out the cause of the injuries or, in a malpractice case, find if the doctors did their job the right way.
Lets say a person is injured slipping on a wet spot outside of a mall. The mall attorneys will want to see the injured person’s medical records. The owner of the mall may have reason to believe that the person sustained the injuries in an accident half a year before the slip and fall incident. In this case, an authorization to release medical records may be denied based on privacy concerns. Therefore, the grocery store can draft and serve the medical records subpoena on the injured person’s medical providers. The injured person may claim that the records are protected by physician-patient privilege. However, this claim will likely fail because the injured person waived the physician-patient privilege by pursuing a lawsuit and placing their health and injury history at issue.
