
After being made the victim of a medical malpractice incident, you may incur bodily injuries or a progressive form of your illness. With this, you may have to undergo additional treatment plans and therefore extra medical expenses that you could have easily avoided otherwise. But at one point in your treatment plan, your treating physician may declare that your health condition has reached the best it can get and is not expected to improve further. In short, this is referred to as a maximum medical improvement. Now, a maximum medical improvement may have a significant impact on your medical malpractice claim and the financial compensation you can receive from it. With that being said, please follow along to find out whether reaching maximum medical improvement affects your claim and how a proficient New York City medical malpractice attorney at Mark L. Bodner, P.C. can help calculate your total incurred damages.
How does reaching maximum medical improvement affect my legal claim?
Since a maximum medical improvement means that your health condition has stabilized, it may allow for a more accurate assessment of the full extent of your incurred injuries or illnesses. In turn, it may allow you to more closely calculate the financial compensation you should ask for in your legal claim. In other words, it may allow you to settle for no less than the full value of your injuries or illnesses.
To use an example, say that your maximum medical improvement means that you will be left with a long-term disability. With this, your attorney, in collaboration with an employed medical expert, may compute what this long-term disability means in terms of your economic and non-economic damages. Specifically, the cost of your future medical treatments to keep your health condition stabilized; the cost of your lost earning capacity with your inability to rejoin the workforce; the cost of your mental anguish and emotional suffering; and more.
Can I still pursue a legal claim without reaching a maximum recovery?
Even though reaching your maximum medical improvement may put you in a stronger negotiation position, we oftentimes do not recommend our clients wait until this point to bring forward their medical malpractice claim. This is because the statute of limitations for such a claim in New York State is generally two years and six months. It may take you longer than this to get to the point of maximum recovery. Ultimately, missing this deadline may result in missing an opportunity for financial compensation entirely.
Rest assured, your attorney and employed medical expert have methods for accurately calculating the cost of your future medical expenses, so that you may still receive a fair amount of compensatory damages. In conclusion, we advise you to reach out to a talented New York City medical malpractice attorney sooner rather than later. We are confident that you will not regret retaining the services of our team at Mark L. Bodner, P.C.