Is it dangerous to sign a medical authorization for the insurance adjuster after my motor vehicle accident?
Attorney David M. Chester from Chester Law Group, a Canton Ohio car accident law firm with offices across Ohio and based in Akron, explains the dangers of giving the insurance adjuster a general medical release after you have been injured in an Ohio accident.
The insurance companies typically will send a general medical authorization for you to sign and return back to them. What they don’t tell you is that you are giving them permission to contact any medical provider you may have ever seen. Adjusters routinely try to get records from decades ago. Some even attempt to argue that your injury from 1997 is the real cause of your symptoms and not the accident that occurred last week. They may even hire defense doctors who will say you are not that hurt, are healed already, or the injury was not from the current accident.
There is no reason for the adjuster to see any of your medical records until a claim is actually made for your injuries.
The law also limits how far back in time the insurance adjuster can go get your past medical records to try to argue your injury was old, or “pre-existing” in the insurance lingo.
Our attorneys at Chester Law will make sure the insurance company only receives medical records that are legally relevant to your current claim according to Ohio law, while insuring they do not have carte blanche access to any medical record they want.
Like I said, I have had several adjusters get medical records using releases signed by clients before I am involved then argue the client’s injuries already existed since they had a sore neck 10 or 15 years earlier. One adjuster actually argued the sore neck from 25 years ago may be the cause of my client’s sore neck today. Unbelievable.