Are you a medical provider with a patient whoโs struggling to secure their personal injury protection (PIP) benefits? If so, you can work with Boston personal injury protection lawyers to advocate for the support your patient deserves.
GED Lawyers has secured over $26 million on behalf of accident victims since the firmโs founding in 1995. Our multilingual team wants to make it easier for medical professionals to help their patients secure the PIP benefits that will make their post-accident treatments more affordable.
You can contact our car accident lawyers in Boston, MA, today to learn more.
What Is Personal Injury Protection in Boston, MA?
In Massachusetts, personal injury protection insurance, or PIP coverage, allows car accident victims to receive up to $8,000 for medical expenses and lost wages. Claimants may request that their PIP cover up to 75% of their lost income and all medical costs up to a total of $8,000.
While that assistance is helpful, PIP does not allow car accident victims to recover more support beyond that $8,000. Likewise, car accident victims canโt recover from non-economic damages like pain and suffering or emotional distress when filing for PIP.
What to Expect When You File a PIP Claim
In an ideal world, PIP insurance providers would offer their clients coverage after serious accidents. Unfortunately, insurers can use bad faith tactics to reduce the payouts they offer to accident victims.
Insurers who want to get out of paying a patientโs medical expenses may undervalue a patientโs losses or the cost of their treatments. They may also deny a patientโs claim outright. They can even accuse medical professionals like you of failing to follow a patientโs health insurance planโs procedures.
Fortunately, you can work with a Boston personal injury lawyer to challenge these accusations.
What Costs Does Personal Injury Protection Usually Cover After an Accident?
Patients filing a PIP claim need to keep careful track of their medical expenses if they want to ask for fair support after a car accident. This means that you may have to provide a patient with invoices related to their:
- Surgical treatments
- X-rays
- Chiropractic services
- Physical therapy and therapeutic massage
- Dental expenses
If a family loses a loved one in a fatal accident, that family can include the cost of a patientโs post-accident care and mortuary services in their request for support.
Itโs also in a patientโs best interest to keep copies of their pay stubs so they can elaborate on the value of their paycheck when asking for wage support through their PIP coverage.
Bostonโs Personal Injury Protection Includes Several Key Features
Some of the features that our Boston personal injury protection attorneys recognize as unique to PIP coverage in Massachusetts include:
- Mandatory PIP inclusions: In Massachusetts, everyone who purchases car insurance will receive PIP coverage through their provider of choice. Drivers must invest in a minimum of $8,000 in coverage per accident if they want to legally operate their vehicle on the road.
- No-fault insurance coverage: Massachusetts awards its PIP coverage on a no-fault system. This means that the insurance a victim invested in will provide them and only them (as well as others on their plan) with financial support after an accident. It does not matter who caused the accident. PIP protects its buyer.
- Benefit coordination: Thereโs a chance that a car accident victim may have health insurance coverage as well as PIP coverage. If this is the case, benefit coordination ensures that a patient doesnโt receive overlapping support from insurance providers. Normally, PIP coverage will help cover any losses that a victimโs health insurance wonโt, so long as they fall within PIP coverageโs coverable expenses.
When Should You Contact a Boston Personal Injury Protection Lawyer?
Itโs in a patientโs best interest to file a claim for PIP coverage as soon as they can after a serious accident. If a patient needs to sue an insurer for additional support, they have no more than three years to gather the evidence necessary to prove that an insurer deliberately shorted or denied their coverage.
Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 260, section 2A will not allow accident victims to take a claim to civil court after their statute of limitations has expired. The faster a car accident victim can reach out to a personal injury protection attorney in Boston, MA, the sooner they can fight for the accident support they need to recover.
How Can You Hold Insurers Responsible for Your Recovery?
When working with patients to hold insurers accountable for the cost of their recovery, you can encourage them to:
- Keep detailed records about their treatments, supplementing their own records with treatment plans that you and other medical specialists may have organized on their behalf.
- Retain records of all of the treatments, transactions, and communications related to their post-accident care.
You can also connect a patient with an experienced PIP lawyer in Boston, like the ones with our firm. Our team can help you and a car accident victim navigate the logistics of filing a PIP claim before holding an insurance company accountable for their financial recovery.
We Can Recover Your Insurance Benefits
Our personal injury protection attorneys in Boston, MA, know every trick insurers can use to deny your patients the coverage they deserve. If your patients are struggling to get in touch with insurance representatives, need to dispute claim assessments, or have had their PIP coverage denied, our team can step in.
GED Lawyers is a Law Firm With a History of Winning. We donโt let insurers manipulate PIP laws to avoid paying accident victims the damages theyโre due. If youโre a medical professional with a client whose PIP benefits have recently been denied, give us a call. Our case consultations come free of charge.