If you get into a car accident and are injured the car insurance company pays your medical bills. I am wondering if it is the same thing for pysical therapy offices? On Wednesday I went to a outpatient physical therapy office associated with a local hospital for right hip pain from hip dysplasia and a cam lesion and when he was doing the exam he went easy on my right hip and then when he examined my ( previously good) left hip he brought my knee up to my chest until it wouldn’t go any higher, then forcefully tried to take it higher, I felt immediate pain in my left hip and said ouch. Then later I was talking to him and he didn’t know I had hip dysplasia or cam lesions on both sides and thought it was only the right side. My previously good left hip now hurts more than my right one does. I don’t know if I should file a incident report about this, becasue I think they should cover my medical bills for my hip physical therapy but I don’t know if they will and if it is standard practice like it is for a car accident. If they don’t pay I will probably get blackballed from their practice I imagine.
Yes, it’s called malpractice insurance. You will have to sue for malpractice If you want reimbursement.
File a report and if they balk at all contact an attorney. I am not a doctor so I can’t say they did anything specifically wrong but it sure sounds like (from your description) that they forgot to do several things right.
The physical therapy “office”, if it is an incorporated entity employing several therapists, will likey have entity level insurance. Each indivdual therapist in the office should have their own malpractice insurance as well. I would suggest that you talk to the managing therapist first and, if they don’t resolve the issue to your satisfaction, then consult a lawyer. Just given the information you provided, malpractice would be difficult to prove without showing that the therapist/office had a history of over manipulating joints to the point of injury.
I’m not looking to sue them I am just wondering if I file a indecent report with them will there insurance automatically start covering my medical bills for the injury like when you have a car accident? Do they just have malpractice insurance or regular “no fault” type insurance?
If you’re going to be having more sessions with them, I would just bring it up with the therapist next time, if it’s still bothering you. The pain might just subside in a few days, if not, they might just be able to work on that pain during your regular session.
That’s what I’d hope for. Technically, they’d probably need a script from a doctor (with a diagnosis) to work on the other hip, but if you’re going to be out of pocket for that (the dr’s appt, the addition sessions), they should probably be covering it if they’re the ones that hurt you.
Also, you called your other hip ‘previously good’ but also mention two pre-existing conditions that it had. If the therapist exasperated those and you had told them that your it was ‘good’ during the initial consultation, that might be on you. But I’m not sure.
IMveryHO, trying icing it and taking some NSAIDs to see if that knocks down the pain. If it does, mentioned it to the therapist next time so they leave that hip alone and don’t go poking and proding them about malpractice suits…assuming the pain dies down. My guess is that they just stretched it too far. PT can be fairly painful. I’ve been in it for 6 months now and there are certain times when it’s been worse then the injury or even the surgery.
Short answer is no. Your car insurance covers you when you fuckup. Their malpractice insurance covers them when they fuck up. Lust like with car insurance, malpractice won’t pay out just because you say they should. With car insurance often a police report or some agreement over the circumstances is required. The burden of proof for malpractice though is quite high and would require lawyers to get involved.
If you just want to get some free therapy, then ask them. Don’t bother going down the insurance route, that’s a dead end for you.
How should I have them document that he injured my hip? I plan to bring up what happened next time I see him, but don’t know if that is “documented” enough, or if he will even write it down. Do I have to ask that a formal indecent report be filed? If my injury does not go away and I end up needing surgery for it I don’t want them to say they have no record of it, at the same time I would like to continue to go to this place for therapy since my insurance limits where I can go and don’t want to get blackballed there.
A)are you still in pain?
B)My PT writes down just about everything I say (and I have to be careful because it’s worker’s comp). If you just say something like ‘BTW, my other hip is still really sore (in pain) from the last time I was here, I think you might have pulled something when you bent it up towards my chest’.
If you’re not still in pain, you, well, kinda need to get over it. I mean, mention it to the PT, but pain is going to be a big part of therapy. Don’t get me wrong, it shouldn’t be overwhelming, they shouldn’t be pulling muscles, they probably shouldn’t be hurting muscles not involved in the original incident, but pain will be involved and you kinda have to suck it up. Like I said earlier, I’m in PT twice a week and it sucks every single time, but I’m aware that if I give it up I run the risk of my shoulder freezing and ending up with a lifelong disability.
Also, if you haven’t mentioned to the therapist that you have an impingement, they need to know that ASAP. Running your joint through the impingement can make it inflamed, which makes the impingement worse which makes running it through that point more painful and it’s sort of self worsening. At least that’s my understanding from when I had a shoulder impingement as part original injury. My first therapist told me to stop moving my arm through the painful spot in my ROM. Where I thought I was just stretching it and keeping it loose, he said I was just making it worse.
So, to sum up, if you’re in pain, I’d say 'BTW, my other hip is still in pain from last week, I think you might have done something when you pushed my knees up to my chest"
If you’re not in pain I’d say something like 'BTW, my other hip was in pain for a few days after our last session…"
And make sure to tell them, or tell them again, about the impingement and anything else going on.
Personally, unless they really messed something up, unless you need surgery or thousands of dollars of extra therapy to fix it, I wouldn’t even ask them about covering it. Even if you did try to get it covered by their insurance, my WAG is that it’ll get thrown out as soon as their adjusters find out you had preexisting conditions with that hip. If you didn’t tell the PT about those issues before hand, you can make that bet a sure thing.
You keep talking about this ‘incident report’. There is no such thing. This isn’t an injury at work you have to report to HR. There isn’t a police report like you get after a car accident you can show to your insurance company. You can’t just file some paperwork and expect malpractice to start paying you.
You can discuss this issue with your PT and maybe they’ll throw in a few extra treatment sessions or you can sue him for malpractice.