What do you get when you combine a certified life care planner with a doctor that has 20 years of experience treating personal injury patients?

What do you get when you combine a certified life care planner with a doctor that has 20 years of experience treating personal injury patients?

The answer to this question is simple. You get the only life care planner you can trust.  

When someone suffers an impairment they may be facing both a physical and functional abnormality, loss, or disfigurement, as well as the potential for psychological damage from their injury or incident. It must be determined whether these impairments will be permanent of resolve over time. 

If an impairment is likely to be permanent, one of the challenges of getting an adjustor to compensate a client’s future medical care is adaquately answering the adjustors’ question of “possibilty vs. probability of lifetime impairment”. 

How do you achieve this?  You must first prove to the insurance company that your client has suffered permanent impairment and that ongoing care will be needed to manage those impairments. While it’s relatively easy to prove the presence of physical impairments such as, decreased range of motion, weakness, muscle spasms; etc., the real difficulty lies in proving how these impairments will affect the patient throughout the rest of their life. It takes a very seasoned clinician with experience treating these types of impairments over the course of many years to have the ability to know and opine on how these impairments may affect the patient in the future. 

Typically, maximum medical improvement (MMI) or maximum rehabilitative potential (MRP) determinations will be made by medical and rehabilitative specialists during the patient’s treatment. After the patient has reached MMI or MRP, the remaining impairments are labeled as permanent. 

It’s common for opinions on “permanency of impairment” to vary among doctors and therefore conflicting opinions can arise in regards to what impairments are permanent and what future treatment, if any, those impairments will require throughout the rest of the patient’s life.  

So how do we know which doctors’ opinions are correct (or most plausible) for the continued or future care of the impairments? It really comes down to the doctor and their experience treating these impairments over the course of many years.  A doctor that has been in the trenches with these types of patients throughout their treatment, is the one that has the credibility to make these determinations. They can also back up their opinion with decades of clinical decision making processes, which in essence, provide the best insight into clinical outcomes. 

Who better to opine on the future care requirements of your client than a doctor life care planner who not only understands your client’s injuries, but also their response to treatment, diagnostic pathophysiology, and their impairment progression over time. Dr. Poppie has served the legal industry as a treating clinician, damages expert, and educator for over 20 years. He specializes in the evaluation and treatment of multi-trauma injuries related to motor vehicle collisions, standard of care and malpractice claims, and as a damages expert to help educate insurance companies and both plaintiff and defense counsel to provide a viable pathway for obtaining a fair settlement based on ethics, research, and evidence-based standards of care. 

As a certified doctor Life Care Planner, Dr. Poppie helps to guide attorneys through all phases of their case and documents impairments with accurate associated costs that are reliable in educating opposing sides as to the true extent of injury. Evidence-based practice guidelines are utilized in all reports in order to ensure the needed criteria is met to withstand scrutiny within all legal jurisdictions. 

Dr. Poppie founded Injury Reporting Consultants to help attorneys and insurance companies resolve personal injury cases through medical analysis and reporting. Injury Reporting Consultants is a collaborative team of dedicated medical professionals using their knowledge to ensure fair outcomes for all parties in personal injury cases.

Recognized specialties include Motor Vehicle Collision, Life Care Planning, Medical Cost Projection, Functional Capacity Evaluation, Onsite Job Analysis, Functional Impairment and Disability, Workplace Injuries, Orthopedic Physical Therapy, Standards of Care, Current Best Practices, Physical Therapy Malpractice, Negligence, File and Medical Record Review, Improper Documentation, Expert Rebuttal Reports, and Expert Testimony.

If you have a client that you would like to discuss their need for an expert report, please contact me directly at 720-982-2000 or email me at: brad@injuryreportingconsultants.com

A medical diagnosis is only as good as the functional assessment that backs it up

A medical diagnosis is only as good as the functional assessment that backs it up

Typically, a medical diagnosis will determine the nature or cause of a disease or impairment. 

Diagnosis may be clinical in origin based on signs, symptoms, imaging, or laboratory findings. These findings can also be found by physical examination, patient interview, medical history; etc.  It is so important to remember that a medical diagnosis is only as good as the functional assessment that backs it up! 

While the informational pieces listed above can certainly help an insurance adjuster or jury member understand what pathological condition the patient is suffering from, it by no means helps them understand the INTENSITY or MAGNITUDE of their suffering. A medical diagnosis alone does not clearly depict how a patient’s facet sprain, partial rotator cuff tear, or bulging lumbar disc impedes upon their ability to perform work related tasks, activities of daily living, or leisure activities. 

Here is where solely relying on a medical diagnosis alone provides insufficient information towards the true injuries your client is experiencing. Over the course of 20 years as a treating doctor, I have received numerous physician referrals with the diagnosis “lumbago” or “cervicalgia” written at the top.  These diagnoses are also known as “low back pain” and “neck pain”, respectively. While the patient may indeed be suffering from such pain and there may be a real and underlying pathological condition as to why they are suffering from them, a medical diagnosis alone does not provide enough impact to alarm the reader of the true functional effect the diagnosis has on the person.

Millions of people are walking around today with neck and lower back pain that have never been in a car accident, work-related incident, sports trauma incident; etc.  

Medical Diagnosis

Insurance adjusters are aware that while a diagnosis helps to decipher what is wrong with the patient medically, it doesn’t give any information from a functional standpoint as to how that diagnosis affects their ability to carry on a normal life. In terms of functional loss, I am referring to disability. 

In fact, according to the Guidelines to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment 5th edition, the American Medical Association defines, “ability and disability can and should involve non-medical practitioners in such determinations.” It was also stated that, “it is not possible for a physician, using medical information alone, to make reliable predictions about the ability of an individual to perform tasks or to meet functional demands…when functional ability is assessed by a standardized non-medical procedure in a vocational rehabilitation setting, the physician may have confidence in the determination.”

According to the Orthopedic Section of the American Physical Therapy Association, a Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) is noted as a comprehensive battery of performance-based tests that are used commonly to determine one’s ability for work related tasks, activities of daily living, and leisure activities.  

As you can see, while it is important to have a medical diagnosis, the diagnosis itself is only as powerful and objectively reliable as the functional assessment that backs it up. In personal injury, the hardest aspect to prove to an insurance adjuster or jury member is how the person’s accident and subsequent diagnosis affect their daily life.  

This is why it is imperative to obtain a Functional Capacity Evaluation in concert with a medical diagnosis in order to not only confirm the medical diagnosis but to quantify its severity as well. A Functional Capacity Evaluation allows the insurance adjuster to understand why the patient is hurt and what they are or are not able to do because of their injuries and thus a viable pathway for settlement is created.

If you have a case that you feel as though you may need more objective data in order to properly educate an insurance adjuster or potential jury, please reach out to discuss your clients’ needs.  

Dr. Poppie has served the legal industry as a treating clinician, damages expert, and educator for over 20 years. He specializes in the evaluation and treatment of multi-trauma injuries related to motor vehicle collisions, standard of care and malpractice claims, and as a damages expert to help educate insurance companies and both plaintiff and defense counsel to provide a viable pathway for obtaining a fair settlement based on ethics, research, and evidence-based standards of care. 

As a certified Functional Capacity Evaluator, Dr. Poppie helps to guide attorneys through all phases of their case and documents functional objective data that is reliable in educating opposing sides as to the true extent of injury. Evidence-based practice guidelines are utilized in all reports in order to ensure the needed criteria is met to withstand scrutiny within all legal jurisdictions. 

Dr. Poppie founded Injury Reporting Consultants to help attorneys and insurance companies resolve personal injury cases through medical analysis and reporting. Injury Reporting Consultants is a collaborative team of dedicated medical professionals using their knowledge to ensure fair outcomes for all parties in personal injury cases.

Recognized specialties include Motor Vehicle Collision, Life Care Planning, Medical Cost Projection, Functional Capacity Evaluation, Onsite Job Analysis, Functional Impairment and Disability, Workplace Injuries, Orthopedic Physical Therapy, Standards of Care, Current Best Practices, Physical Therapy Malpractice, Negligence, File and Medical Record Review, Improper Documentation, Expert Rebuttal Reports, and Expert Testimony.

If you have a client that you would like to discuss their need for an expert report, please contact me directly at 720-982-2000 or email me at: brad@injuryreportingconsultants.com

Sincerely,

Dr. Brad Poppie, DPT, CLCP, CFCE, CSCS
Doctor of Physical Therapy | 
Certified Life Care Planner
 | Medical Cost Projection Specialist | 
Certified Functional Capacity Evaluator | 
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. 

Learn more at Dr. Poppie’s educational videos!

The #1 Reason A Life Care Planner Can Make or Break Your Case!

The #1 Reason A Life Care Planner Can Make or Break Your Case!

Determining future medical care for your client has traditionally been calculated by either a certified life care planner or by the law firm itself. In the past, a life care planner was hired toward the end of the case’s lifecycle as a last-ditch effort to avoid trial.

While that tactic may have been acceptable ten years ago, more recently, things have started to change. Attorneys are discovering that hiring a life care planner at the beginning of the case can help provide valuable insights throughout all phases to help get the case settled in an acceptable and swift manner.

This can be especially valuable when a life care planner is hired during the pre-litigation phase as their impact can help with their cases’ outcome tenfold.

Think of it this way; If a case is like a ship, the life care planner is most effective as the helmsman or navigator. The skilled life care planner can bring an element of foresight to the pre-litigated case to help guide the ship for the attorney (the captain) throughout the route to settlement. Waiting to get the life care planner involved right before the ship docks at the destination would be a mistake, because while they can help dock the boat, chances are, without a navigation specialist, time and efficiency were wasted during the journey.  

Below are some very important values that the life care planner can bring to your pre-litigation phase:

Determining any missing records that need to be requested –
Countless times, when I am given records to review for a case, very important records are missing that would essentially reveal information that can be viable for producing a valid and reliable report.

Life Care Planner

Helping in the preparation of a demand package –
Oftentimes, in the pre-litigation phase, future medical costs are estimated or marginal costs are used to get a rough estimate of future damages.  A simple medical cost projection produced by the life care planner will certify that the future costs are in fact accurate, required, usual, reasonable, and customary. This report will essentially save the law firm time and money, and significantly increase the chances of getting the case settled prior to litigation.

Helping to assist in identifying the appropriate experts needed –
While working through medical records, many times there are gaps in care, archaic records, or inadequate practitioners that the client has seen that unfortunately make it difficult to provide a sound life care plan that is accurate.  The last thing you want to discover as an attorney is that in the 9th inning, your life care planner uncovered that all along your client was experiencing post-concussive / cognitive symptoms and they never saw a neuropsychologist for an evaluation. By getting a life care planner involved early in the process, they can certainly help you avoid roadblocks and setbacks as you prepare your case.

Educating attorneys on the proper questions to ask opposing experts: No member of your team will understand the case better than your life care planner.  You can bet that there will be a disconnect between the treating practitioners in regards to them essentially working as a well-oiled engine towards the care of your client.  The skilled life care planner is well versed in the collaboration of multiple specialties and can help you determine the most appropriate questions to ask both your retained experts as well as opposing experts in order to help educate the jury.

As you can see, retaining a life care planner early on in your case, can improve the process and prevent last-minute scrambling to put future medical care costs on paper. I can assure you that leaving a life care planner out of the process will prove to be a disservice to your client as many important items may be left undiscovered and therefore not taken into consideration.

If you have a case that could benefit from the insights of a life care planner, reach out to one today. You’ll receive valuable information and insight throughout the process to support a more thorough case.

Dr. Poppie has served the legal industry as a treating clinician, damages expert, and educator for over 20 years. He specializes in the evaluation and treatment of multi-trauma injuries related to motor vehicle collisions, standard of care and malpractice claims, and as a damages expert to help educate insurance companies and both plaintiff and defense counsel to provide a viable pathway for obtaining a fair settlement based on ethics, research, and evidence-based standards of care. 

As a certified life care planner, Dr. Poppie helps to guide attorneys through all phases of their case and projects accurate and reliable future medical costs. Evidence-based practice guidelines are utilized in all reports in order to ensure the needed criteria is met to withstand scrutiny within all legal jurisdictions. 

Dr. Poppie founded Injury Reporting Consultants to help attorneys and insurance companies resolve personal injury cases through medical analysis and reporting. Injury Reporting Consultants is a collaborative team of dedicated medical professionals using their knowledge to ensure fair outcomes for all parties in personal injury cases.

Recognized specialties include Motor Vehicle Collision, Life Care Planning, Medical Cost Projection, Functional Capacity Evaluation, Onsite Job Analysis, Functional Impairment and Disability, Workplace Injuries, Orthopedic Physical Therapy, Standards of Care, Current Best Practices, Physical Therapy Malpractice, Negligence, File and Medical Record Review, Improper Documentation, Expert Rebuttal Reports, and Expert Testimony

If you have a client that you would like to discuss their need for an expert report, please contact me directly at 720-982-2000 or email me at: brad@injuryreportingconsultants.com

Sincerely,

Dr. Brad Poppie, DPT, CLCP, CFCE, CSCS
Doctor of Physical Therapy | 
Certified Life Care Planner
 | Medical Cost Projection Specialist | 
Certified Functional Capacity Evaluator | 
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. 

The Role of the Rehabilitation Doctor in a Personal Injury Case

The Role of the Rehabilitation Doctor in a Personal Injury Case

From a healthcare standpoint, personal injury cases can involve a wide array of professional disciplines including medical, chiropractic, physical therapy, speech therapy, and psychology to name just a few.

These different healthcare specialties not only treat the patient to help them return to their prior level of function, but each discipline can offer specific insight into the patient’s progress and future prognosis.

Many times, however, an expectation is put upon the treating medical doctor to give an opinion about the overall prognosis of a patient. While medical doctors can say whether they think a person has achieved maximum medical improvement, they typically have to consult with the patient’s rehabilitation doctors to determine the patient’s actual rehabilitative potential. The difference here is that medical doctors diagnose and treat pathology and rehabilitation doctors such as physical therapists, evaluate and treat dysfunction.

To further break this down consider this: If you asked a physical therapist to prescribe certain medications or read an MRI report, they wouldn’t be able to do so because it’s out of the scope of their practice and not licensed in this field. On the other hand, if you asked a medical doctor to perform a physical therapy rehabilitative treatment regimen they would not be able to successfully treat this patient because they simply aren’t trained in doing so. Each respective discipline, both medical and rehabilitative, have their own unique training and skill sets that give them credibility to opine on specific aspects of the patients’ overall prognosis.

Now knowing that your patient’s medical doctor can only opine on a portion of your client’s injury and recovery, you can see why a collaborative approach with various healthcare professionals is critical when determining a patient’s overall prognosis. When the question “what is the patients’ rehabilitative potential” or “has the patient achieved maximum medical improvement” is inevitably asked in trial, if the appropriate experts are not in line to give an expert opinion on this topic, it will be difficult to prove to a jury if maximum medical improvement or maximal rehabilitative potential has been achieved.

As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, I have testified in trial numerous times against medical doctors ranging from orthopedic surgeons, physiatrists, and interventional pain physicians. Most often, the opposing opinion of these experts is different from mine in regards to the improvement of the patient.

It’s not necessarily that their opinion is wrong, it typically comes down to their opinion being based off of the client’s pathological condition and if that diagnosable condition has been cured or if there is an impairment that still exists. From the rehabilitation doctor’s perspective, we are looking at the overall rehabilitation potential of the patient and whether their function will improve or regress over time; thus providing a rehabilitative prognosis.

From a medical standpoint, the person may have reached maximum medical improvement from a disease or pathology standpoint, but the doctor of physical therapies’ view is if the person has reached maximum rehabilitative potential. The physical therapist has the education, experience, and expertise to opine on this question with certainty and should be integrated into determining the overall prognosis of the patient.

Make sure you provide the insurance company and or jury members both the medical doctors’ AND rehabilitative doctors’ opinions in order for an accurate and well-rounded prognosis to be made.

Want to learn more about IRC and the services we provide? Visit our channel, Personal Injury Today for informative videos, or visit our website to set up a free case consultation.

Functional Capacity Evaluations confirm the diagnosis and quantify injury severity

Functional Capacity Evaluations confirm the diagnosis and quantify injury severity

In today’s ever-evolving personal injury world, insurance companies are also changing the way they relate diagnoses to an injury as well as how they equate those diagnoses to an impairment.

What does this look like? Well, when someone gets injured in a car accident, they typically endure soft tissue injuries such as damage to the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Many times these types of injuries are not considered serious or life changing and can be a challenge to prove their severity to an insurance company. With soft tissue injuries it can be difficult to verify severity because of the subjective nature of the tissue which can’t be quantified in medical reports. For example, a doctor cannot document that your lower back is 50% more stiff after your car accident because that is purely a subjective complaint from the patient. There is no way to objectively measure or quantify the subjective severity of the increased stiffness.

Patients can also suffer from more severe injuries that cause a higher degree of pain and suffering. These injuries are more catastrophic in nature such as head injuries, broken bones, spinal cord injuries, amputations; etc. These types of injuries are more easily documented and are objectively quantifiable through diagnostic testing measures.

Whether your client has sustained a soft tissue injury or a catastrophic injury, you must always go a step beyond getting the diagnosis to win your case. The problem with solely relying on a diagnosis is that the diagnosis often describes the type of injury sustained but not the full extent of the damage. Without a full understanding of the extent of the injury(ies) how can you prove the impact of the injury and/or what care the client will need long term?

Confidence in the injuries sustained in the client’s accident must come from a correct diagnosis as well as how that diagnosis affects the injureds’ life.  The only trial-proven test to confirm the diagnosis and prove the impact is the FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY EVALUATION (FCE).  During this 4-hour evaluation, the client’s impairments and disabilities are discovered which confirms not only the diagnosis itself but it also quantifies the severity of the diagnosis.

As a certified functional capacity evaluator, I have encountered numerous cases where a client has come in with a diagnosis and discovered through the FCE that this particular diagnosis has caused numerous other impairments and disabilities that would never have been discovered had the diagnosis been the only form of artillery that the attorney presented to the insurance company in their demand letter.

Arm your case with double barrels ablazing. One barrel is the diagnosis and the other barrel is the functional capacity evaluation.  Both fired together produce a tremendous force that launches a substantial impact.

Want to learn more about IRC and the services we provide? Visit our channel, Personal Injury Today for informative videos, or visit our website to set up a free case consultation.