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What to do if the bills start coming before the settlement money comes?
We will do everything we can to work with your doctors and healthcare providers to assure them that the bills will be paid. It is against the Rules of Professional Responsibility for an attorney to pay those bills directly. Personal Injury Protection or No-Fault coverage is available to pay some of the initial bills. Likewise, once Personal Injury Protection or No-Fault is gone, your health insurance can step in to help pay the bills initially until the settlement occurs. If health insurance isn’t available, then we have many doctors who will work with us on a lien basis whereby they will wait to get paid until the settlement occurs because you will have signed an agreement to pay them out of the settlement. Some healthcare providers will not wait for payment. In those instances, it may be necessary for you to make monthly payments to them in order to keep them from turning your account over to collections. They are entitled to get paid, and there is nothing in the law that stops their right from trying to collect the money that is owed. However, we are successful in most instances in getting the creditors to wait to receive their money. Unfortunately, the entire process usually takes several months before everything is sorted out and resolved and the money paid. Because we work on a percentage basis, we don’t get paid until the case is closed, and so we try to work as fast as we can. However, in some instances there is simply nothing we can do to speed the process up any faster. The time period between the accident and the time the settlement comes is often stressful and frustrating. Still, we can make it much better and give the doctors and hospitals and ambulance companies a great deal of confidence in knowing that they will be paid and everything will work out. The insurance company that insures the party who caused the accident will generally not make payments in advance of the entire case settling. Such interim payments are extremely rare within the industry. Still, stick with us and be patient and things will probably work out just fine.
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