Depending on your injury in an accident, the damages you need paid could be allocated quite differently. Some injuries involve expensive surgery as the primary expense, while others include mental health care costs. When it comes to getting ongoing rehabilitation and physical therapy costs paid, there are often some specific nuances to take into account.
First, note that settlements and injury awards are calculated once, and it is important to calculate how much you will need to cover ongoing expenses as they come up since you only get one shot at getting damages. Second, it is important to consider whether your damages or settlement will be a lump sum or an annuity, as this changes how you will pay. Lastly, it is important to provide enough evidence of what your future rehab costs will be so that the court is allowed to pay them in the first place.
For help with an injury case, contact The Reiff Law Firm’s Pennsylvania personal injury lawyers at (215) 709-6940.
Calculating Settlements and Jury Awards for Future Rehab and Therapy Costs
When you file a personal injury lawsuit, your case will include damages for all kinds of areas of harm, primarily focused on medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. The tricky thing about lawsuits is that – whether you settle or get an award from a jury at the end of trial – the damages are calculated and set in stone one time at this stage of your recovery. As such, it is important that you properly calculate and predict your future rehab needs so that you can get enough money in the damages to cover them in the future.
For many, it might actually be best to wait until you have improved and finished rehabbing before you file your lawsuit. Given that most states give you 2 to 4 years to file your lawsuit, this could be enough time to get any surgeries you need, attend rehabilitation, and get back to somewhat “maximum improvement” before filing the lawsuit.
If that is not possible or practical, then our Philadelphia personal injury lawyers will need to predict – as accurately as we can – how much your rehab and physical therapy will cost going forward. This means using any bills you already have as a starting point and taking potential future inflation into account. We will also have to speak with medical experts and physical therapists about your expected road to recovery so that we can see when and how often you will need future rehab and therapy costs.
For many injury victims, rehabilitation and physical therapy will happen once during your recovery and then end. However, some conditions might be likely to have flare-ups or recurrence, potentially requiring additional rehab every few years. Medical experts can typically give an opinion on what kinds of future care you will need, and the jury can make a decision on how much to award to cover those costs.
Paying for Future Rehabilitation with a Lump Sum vs. an Annuity
When you settle an injury claim or receive an award at trial, you often have a choice about how you want to receive the money: all at once or in periodic payments. A “lump sum” payment will give you the entirety of the money now, and you can choose how to spend or allocate it yourself. With an annuity, you get the money in payments that might be harder – or easier – to match up to future rehab needs.
We start thinking about this from the perspective of what care you will need and when you will need it. Future rehab needs could include weekly or monthly appointments, a checkup every 6 months, or as-needed treatment whenever the injury flairs up with no predictable schedule. Understanding these needs allows us to match them up to the money.
If your future costs will be unpredictable, it might be best to have the money in a lump sum. This allows you to bank it or invest it so that you can draw on the funds as needed, setting aside a rainy-day fund for when you need to tap into it for rehab costs. However, if you know your rehab will happen on a set schedule, then taking an annuity might be easiest, as the payments should likely be able to line up.
There are other considerations that go into whether to take a lump sum or an annuity, aside from when you will need to pay for rehab. Other medical care costs, such as potential surgery, should be taken into account, too. Additionally, you may be on benefits programs that take your income and current assets into account, potentially causing problems if you have too much money paid to you in a lump settlement at once. For example, this could kick you off of Medicaid or an ACA marketplace health plan if a sudden influx of cash could disqualify you from the programs you rely on.
Proving Future Rehab Costs for an Injury Lawsuit
Most states have some sort of requirement/threshold for what you need to prove to claim future medical expenses. Generally, this requires some reasonable proof on which to base the claim for future medical expenses. This usually comes from medical experts that we can hire to examine your case, including the doctors actually treating you and neutral experts who can give an opinion on what will be needed in the future.
Claiming Future Rehab Costs in a Pennsylvania Injury Case
Our attorneys work in Pennsylvania to help injury victims get compensation for their accidents, including the costs of future rehabilitation and physical therapy. We can analyze your specific case and advise you on what expenses from both before and after the settlement you should be able to claim, as well as how to best go about getting these costs paid.
Call Our Pennsylvania Personal Injury Lawyers Today
For a free case evaluation, contact our Bucks County personal injury lawyers at The Reiff Law Firm at (215) 709-6940.
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