ICBC Tip-of-the-Month (February 2015): Top 10 Mistakes (#2)

TOP 10 MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN MAKING AN ICBC CLAIM

Mistake #2: You Do Not Get All The Treatments You Need

ICBC often stops funding treatments even though your family doctor supports further rehabilitation (massage, physiotherapy, chiropractor, active rehab etc.). For example, after the first 12 physiotherapy sessions, your doctor and physiotherapist support another round of 6-12 sessions. The handling ICBC adjuster denies ICBC coverage for the further sessions. The biggest mistake is that you stop attending physiotherapy because ICBC said so. 

You have a duty to mitigate your damages and ICBC is setting you up for failure, as they will later argue that you didn't follow the advice of your doctor and physiotherapist to get better. The court and ICBC will not buy the argument that "ICBC stopped approving the sessions, so I stopped going".  See previous post on the issue of mitigation: click here.

Advice: you have to either fund the rehab privately yourself and recover those expenses in your tort claim OR try to find a clinic that will give you a Direction to Pay. 

Direction to Pay: an agreement between you and the clinic that the clinic will advance the treatments on a running account and you recover the expenses once your claim settles, as long as you present their account as a special damage in your case. 

This area can get tricky and it is best to consult with an experienced personal injury lawyer, like Perminder S. Tung.

Do you have questions about your ICBC personal injury claim or accident?  If so, click here arrange your free consultation with  ICBC Claims Lawyer Perminder S. Tung (Services provided for ICBC injury claims throughout all of BC: Vancouver, Surrey, Langley, Burnaby, Richmond, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Tri-city area and all over BC)

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