How Medical Illustrations Can Help Create Better Demand Letters

Your client is done treating, and you’re gathering all their records together in preparation for drafting your narrative of the personal injury accident that led to their injuries and what their prognosis is. You’re wondering if and how medical illustrations can help create better demand letters.

They can. Let’s discuss how that’s the case.

The Different Types of Medical Information Demonstratives Can Convey

You may not be initially inclined to source visual depictions of points you’ve put forth in your demand letter, but you may want to after considering the following points:

Visuals Aid in Showing How Your Client’s Injuries Occurred

How often after you receive a copy of a car accident report do you look at the diagram depicting how it occurred?

Or, if you’re dealing with a medical malpractice case, how often do you scan through the records, ultimately spending significant time looking at any visuals (like X-rays, MRI imaging report, etc.) contained within the packet?

If you’re like most people, this type of information catches your attention, and it’s likely to do the same for the insurance adjuster reviewing your demand letter.

While you may think of illustrations as nothing more than standalone, static images, we urge you instead to envision them much like step-by-step instructions that would come with furniture requiring assembly. In other words, consider how they can be arranged to show the sequence of events that occurred, such as a crash that led to your client’s injuries.

Also, in a medical malpractice scenario, you may use various illustrations to show what a typical standard of care doctors would typically use to treat a patient and place that side-by-side with the steps you allege your client’s physician took.

Having a graphical representation of how you believe an injury incident unfolded to accompany any text narrative can make it easier for an insurance adjuster to understand your position as to what missteps occurred that caused your client’s adverse health outcomes.

Illustrations Show the Severity of Your Client’s Injuries or Illness

You have to remember that insurance adjusters are the ones reviewing your demand letter and, while they undergo specialized training to analyze and respond to those letters, they’re not doctors.

Some insurance companies may have their own attorneys and doctors on staff that adjusters can consult with if they have questions about how to respond your demands. However, lawyers aren’t medical experts, and the physicians insurance companies hire aren’t necessarily well-informed about each and every type of injury or illness claimants may have.

Thus, illustrations like these can be effective in helping depict what you and your client know about a particular impairment or medical condition, much like what you would see in a medical textbook.

This graphical representation can aid adjusters or anyone else who views the diagram better contextualize its severity and impact on patient health.

Showcasing Treatment Options Pursued

Medical exhibits that you send, along with the demand letter, can provide a visual representation of treatment options received and their expected or actual impact on patient care.

Depicting this visually can make it easier for adjusters to not only gain some perspective as to how complex treating certain medical conditions is but also help justify the cost of the procedures.

These illustrations are also effective at conveying what your client has been through in terms of mental anguish leading up to their non-routine procedure and the pain and suffering they may have endured afterward. Illustrations showing treatment options pursued can also be effective for showing how and why one procedure may have failed, necessitating that a different operation or treatment to be performed.

The insight provided by a depiction like this can make it easier to justify requesting compensation to cover additional medical bills.

What Types of Medical Illustrations Should You Include with Your Demand Letter?

Here at Advocacy Digital Media, we produce all different types of medical illustrations to meet our attorney clients’ needs, including:

• Anatomical diagrams: These are effective for demonstrating which body parts a patient’s illness or injury affects. These are also ideal for showing graphical depictions of your client’s injuries, such as bone fractures, or illnesses, such as what exposure to a toxic substance did to a person’s internal organs.
• Images showing procedural or operative protocols followed: This is the category into which the step-by-step standard of care, for example, a doctor should have followed, could be juxtaposed so it’s clear where a deviation occurred. Additionally, you could better explain the procedures your client underwent by depicting them visually.
• Pre- and post-treatment progression imagery: Showing what state your client’s health was in pre and post-operation can be effective at justifying why it was necessary for them.

As you can tell, the illustrations described above can make your words come to life, clarifying any doubt an insurance adjuster may have had about what happened, where liability lies, the extent of injuries your client has, treatment options pursued, and other important details.