Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of disability. What’s worse, these injuries often go untreated or unrecognized by medical professionals. Many medical professionals lack training in the evaluation of TBI symptoms. In workers’ compensation cases, insurance companies often ignore the problems or send the patient to doctors unable to provide treatment.
Insurance companies frequently choose their own short-term savings over the tremendous long-term costs of TBI to affected families and communities. Patients and their families should push for needed care as soon as possible. Early evaluation and rehabilitation may have a significant positive impact on recovery. Additionally, a lengthy delay in evaluation and diagnosis may make it much more difficult for health professionals to provide important opinions at trial establishing an accident as the cause of the injury.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides the following data:
- An estimated 1.7 million Americans suffer TBI each year; and,
- In a single year, the estimated cost of TBI in the United States was $60 Billion.
If anything, these numbers could be too low. I’ve seen far too many cases where employers, insurance carriers, and even the patients themselves, ignored the problems of TBI. This leads to greater suffering by the patient. And, this increases long-term costs to everyone.
Traumatic brain injuries can produce multiple problems which lead to disability. These problems can be behavioral, physical, emotional, and cognitive. I’ve listed a number of TBI symptoms on my law firm website. The article “Minimizing the effect of TBI-related physical sequelae on vocational return” provides a good discussion of the various problems associated with TBI.
Even mild TBI can produce lingering effects that impact a patient’s ability to maintain employment. Those effects should not be ignored. Research published by the Brain Injury Association of America reveals a substantial percentage of individuals suffering from TBI remain unemployed long-term.
If you have a family member who may suffer problems from TBI, you should carefully review the symptoms. You should look for local medical professionals who possess the skill and training to evaluate and treat these injuries. And, you should be prepared to patiently help your loved one with the serious issues that accompany these injuries.
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From its office in Huntsville, the Blackwell Law Firm represents injured clients across Alabama. We have worked with clients, doctors and experts to prepare Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) cases for trial.
(256) 261-1315
