I Suffered A Head Injury While Working In California. What Information Will Help Me Recover?

In many cases, brain injuries lead to long-lasting changes, and victims may never return to the way things were before their accidents. However, even if your recovery might not return you to the way things were before your injury, you still want good information as soon as possible.

People who get good, accurate diagnoses of their conditions early can move more quickly toward the most appropriate treatments. The sooner you get the proper treatment, the better your chances are of making a full recovery or reaching the highest possible level of recovery.

Unfortunately, the doctors, insurance companies and others who should help you with your recovery sometimes get things wrong. That’s why you need to remain an active, central participant throughout the whole process.

Get The Right Testing

Brain injuries can be devastating, and studies cited by the National Library of Medicine suggest that as many as 1 in 4 brain injuries are work-related. Frequently, these injuries follow a fall or blow to the head by another object. Workers who suffer these injuries need good information to aid their recovery. You need to know what’s going on inside your skull.

In many cases, this means that workers need good diagnostic testing. Unfortunately, they often find that it’s not as easy as it should be to get the tests they need. The physicians who will see you directly after your injury are likely focused on treating the most immediate and life-threatening issues. Your emergency room doctors will do everything they can to save your life, but they might not be brain specialists. As a result, they might overlook some details of how you got injured, or they might not recommend all the appropriate follow-up testing.

Additionally, the insurance company that pays your workers’ compensation may argue that some tests aren’t necessary. These denials are far more common than they should be, and they can limit or delay your recovery.

It’s common for brain injuries to require a whole array of tests, each of which may reveal a different piece of information that can be vital to your recovery:

•      CT scans to check for brain bleed
•      MRIs
•      Tests for the presence or severity of spinal damage
•      Tests for nerve damage

Brain injuries are complicated. The brain is the most sophisticated organ in your body. It controls your thoughts, regulates your emotions and coordinates nearly everything you do, consciously and unconsciously. More than any other part of your body, your brain defines who you are and how you see yourself. As a result, injuries to your brain can have far-reaching consequences, and you need to understand what they may be. That understanding will, in turn, guide your treatment.

Get The Right Attorney

After an injury to your brain or spine, you will more than likely need follow-up testing and treatment after you stabilize. However, if you suffered your injury at work, this is where your workers’ compensation insurance company might step in and start reviewing all the requests for additional testing.

While you’re in the hospital with the ER docs, your physicians have essentially a blank check to pursue all the tests and treatments they feel they need to keep you alive. But once you’ve survived and stabilized, the workers’ comp insurance company goes into a cost-containment mode. When you’re no longer in an emergency situation, the insurance company will often deny additional testing, even when it’s medically appropriate.

This is where the right attorney will push back or help you get the testing you need. This is common practice in personal injury cases, like after an auto accident, because those attorneys frequently prepare as though they might go to trial. The practice is less common in workers’ compensation cases. That’s unfortunate because those tests have two key purposes:

1.      They help doctors find the right course of treatment.
2.      They provide a clear picture of the extent of your injury, which you need as the foundation for your workers’ compensation claim.

Accordingly, you want an attorney who will go the extra mile to help you get the right testing. Many workers’ comp attorneys will hesitate to reach into their own pockets to cover those tests, but some will do that when they know you need the tests. They know that those tests can have a big impact on your recovery.

Get The Right Treatment

Getting the right treatment as early as possible is the key to recovering from a brain injury as fully as possible. That means getting the tests you need to identify the right treatment, and it often means working with an attorney who will help you get those tests. Settling for anything less could mean settling for a partial recovery.