How do I find a doctor after being injured in a car accident? Some primary care physicians do not see patients, even their own patients, for treatment relating to injuries from a car accident. Delaware Personal Injury Attorney Ben Schwartz gives his viewers 3 ways to find a doctor for medical treatment after a car accident.

Hi, I’m Attorney Ben Schwartz,

Today we are going to do a video. The video is three ways to find a doctor to treat you for your auto accident injuries. This video came about because Jim from Dover, Delaware wrote in, he asked a question. He said my primary care doctor will not see me after my car accident. Apparently, my primary care doctor’s office does not see their patients after car accidents.

And I have to say this is, something that we run into. Not infrequently, you know it’s something that maybe in ten percent of cases, our client will tell us that they got in the accident, they went to the emergency room. The emergency room took x-rays or ct-scans and checked them out, made sure they are, you know going to survive. They discharged them, gave them instructions to follow up with their family doctor or follow up with their primary care provider. Then, they call the family doctor’s office, and they are told by the receptionist, oh doctor such and such does not see patients after a car accident. Then our clients are left wondering, what do we do? So here are three things that you can do if this happens to you or if this is happening to someone that you love!

Number One – call back to your primary care doctor’s office and ask them, if there’s someone that serves as a referral coordinator. Talk to that referral coordinator and ask them, who do you refer people to when they have injuries like mine? They will give you a name. Maybe it will be a chiropractor, maybe it will be an orthopedic doctor. Call that doctor’s office and see if you can make an appointment to be seen for your car accident injuries.

Number Two – you can go back to the emergency department. Walk into the emergency department, go to the front desk, the triage desk and tell the nurse, ‘I was in here the other day. I had a car accident, came in, got seen, and got discharged with instructions to see my primary care physician. My primary care physician won’t see me. Who else can you refer me to?’ The ER should have a list of doctors that they refer people to after a car accident. Not every person that gets in a car accident has a primary care doctor, so sometimes the ER needs to referr that patient for follow-up. They don’t have a primary care doctor who would they refer you to?

The Third thing – contact an attorney for your case. As a personal injury attorney and in most of the cases I handle, the vast majority of cases that I handle are personal injury cases, so I can tell you from experience I see the same doctors over and over. If you call me up and you tell me this is where I live, this is where I work, I need to see a doctor for my car accident, I can tell you in your geographic area, in that zip code, here is the doctor that a lot of people go to. I know this doctor is a good doctor, clinically good. I know this doctor will write a report, and give testimony if need be. So, I can tell you where to go and if you’re not in my geographic area, let’s say your car accident happened in Topeka, Kansas you could call a personal injury attorney in Topeka, Kansas and I would bet that they know doctors that you could see for a car accident.

So Jim, thank you for writing in with a question. I think it’s a great question. It’s a frequent question in my law practice and I think it’s a topic that hopefully will be helpful and somewhat entertaining to people. So I appreciate you writing in. Folks if you are watching this video and you have a topic or you have a question and you think it would make for a good question and answer video, send me an email, at ben.schwartz@schwartzandschwartz.com.

Thanks for watching!