When you are the victim of a medical mistake or injured by negligence on the part of a medical care provider, you have the right to pursue a claim for medical malpractice. A medical malpractice claim should allow you to recover compensation for medical bills and cost, for lost income/wages, for pain and suffering, for emotional distress and for any other losses resulting from your healthcare provider’s actions. If the medical malpractice leads to the death of a patient, his or her family members can also pursue a medical malpractice claim to obtain wrongful death damages. When a medical malpractice case is brought, typically there will be an insurance company involved. This is because doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers carry medical malpractice insurance to protect themselves from lawsuits brought by injured patients. If you have been the victim of any kind of medical mistake in St. Louis Missouri, there is a good chance that the insurance company for the doctor or care provider is going to want to talk to you.
Should You Talk with the Insurance Company?
Insurance companies often try to settle medical malpractice cases outside of court, which means that they want to negotiate a deal with you. The idea is that they will pay you a designated sum of money to cover your losses and, in exchange, you will sign a waiver of liability and give up the right to take your case to court in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Arranging a settlement can have some significant benefits, including the fact that you are guaranteed some compensation and the fact that you won’t have to endure a long and potentially drawn-out court case. As such, at some point, it may make sense to talk to the insurance company in order to try to convince them of how badly you have been hurt and to try to negotiate a settlement.
However, and this is a big however, insurance companies do NOT want to provide you with full and fair compensation for your losses caused by medical malpractice. Insurance companies want to maintain healthy profits and they do this by paying out as few claims as possible and by paying out as little as they can get away with when someone is hurt.
This means insurance companies may try to get you to say things that could undermine and jeopardize your case or result in limited compensation for you. Insurance companies may also try to coerce you or pressure you into accepting a settlement that is less than what you deserve.
Once you accept the settlement and sign the liability waiver, here is nothing that you can do. For all of these reasons, you need to be very careful about when you talk to insurance companies and what you say. The best thing to do, in almost every St. Louis medical malpractice case, is to be represented by a qualified and experienced St. Louis medical malpractice lawyer. Your attorney can negotiate with the insurer on your behalf, talk to the insurer for you and be there when you answer questions to ensure that your legal rights are protected.
