Calculating Future Medical Expenses

Of all the potential recoveries from personal injury lawsuits, compensation for future medical expenses is arguably the most important. This is the amount of money it will take to provide the plaintiff with the necessary medical expenses he or she requires as a result of those injuries sustained in the traumatic event. A plaintiff will typically call upon their treating physicians to testify about their prior medical diagnoses and those medical treatments medically necessary to alleviate the physical pain or to improve physical limitations associated with an injury. Most common forms of medical treatments include prescriptions, physical therapy, rehabilitation, prosthetics, wheel chairs, steroid injections, neurofrequency ablations and, in severe cases, surgery.

Many times a person will file a personal injury lawsuit merely because the amount of money required for future medical expenses can run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Even a neck injury can result in future medical expenses far exceeding $500,000.00. The most severe injuries, including paraplegia and quadriplegia, can result in medical expenses totaling over $15,000,000.00. In order to calculate the amount of money needed for these future medical treatments, the treating physician will testify as to the number of treatments likely required in a given year, the number of years the treatment is likely required and the dollar amount for each treatment. Other experts then take the physician’s testimony and calculate what’s called the “present day value” of these medical treatments, which calculation takes into consideration inflationary rates of medical treatments as well as interest rates.

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