How can Medical Record Reviews Fortify Burn Injury Claims?
Burns can occur in a variety of situations and places like at work, at home, in public, at shopping malls, restaurants, etc., caused by carelessness, negligence, or intentional misconduct.
If someone else's negligence causes burn injuries, the affected person can seek compensation. Professional medical record review services can assist burn injury lawyers in gathering critical facts for the claim.
Victims of burn injuries can seek compensation for a variety of reasons, including medical expenses, infection, scarring, loss of feeling, respiratory issues, organ failure, tissue damage, pain and suffering, lost income due to missed work, and more.
Burn injuries are most commonly caused by being exposed to fire, hot liquid, chemicals, electricity, friction, a gas explosion, firework displays, radioactive radiation or steam. Such injuries can result in serious bodily and mental harm.
What do burn injury statistics depict?
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), around 1 million individuals in the United States are impacted by burn injuries each year.
According to a National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimate, local fire departments would respond to 1,353,500 fires in 2021. These fires killed 3,800 people, injured 14,700 people, and destroyed $15.9 billion in property. Home fires accounted for 75% of all fire deaths, while vehicle fires accounted for 18%.
According to a data from the United States Fire Administration, fires in roadway vehicles account for 16% of all fire accidents handled by the fire department. Minor traffic accidents, such as bicycle accidents, can cause friction burns. During a car accident, the gasoline in the car might ignite, resulting in enormous explosions and burn injuries.
The majority of burn injuries are caused by heat from a fire or a hot liquid. Burn injuries are classified into three kinds. There are three types of burn damage: first-degree burn damage, second-degree burn damage, and third-degree burn damage, depending on their depth and severity.
First-degree burns injure the skin's outer layer. Second-degree burns damage both the outer and lower layers of skin and may result in blisters and swelling that necessitate medical attention. Third-degree burns impact all layers of the skin and can cause nerve damage and loss of feeling. Fourth-degree burns involve practically all skin layers and can penetrate deep into muscle and bone structures.
Types of Burn Injuries
Chemical burns are caused by skin or eye contact with a strong acid or alkali.
Thermal burns are caused by heat sources such as hot metal, fires, and so on, which raise the skin's temperature.
Friction burns are wounds caused by rubbing or scraping the skin against a rough surface.
Burns induced by extended exposure to radiation sources such as the sun's UV rays or X-rays are referred to as radiation burns.
Electrical burns are burns caused by an electrical current passing through the body.
Inhalation burns are burns caused by inhaling hot, filthy air from a fire.
Scald burns are injuries produced by being exposed to extremely hot water or steam.
How can you prove negligence in burn injury claims?
Proving negligence in a burn injury claim is somewhat difficult. Personal injury attorneys attempt to prove the following in order to establish negligence in a burn injury claim:
Duty of Care
Only if the defendant owed a duty of care when the injury happened may a duty of care negligence action be filed. Employers are legally required to take reasonable precautions to keep employees safe. Lawyers gather evidence to demonstrate that the offender owed the victim a duty of care. The duty of care due will be determined by the facts of the case and what a reasonable person would have done in the same scenario. For example, in the event of a fire in an office building, the employer owes it to the employees to make their working environment safe.
Breach of Duty of Care
The attorney then attempts to demonstrate a breach of the duty of care. Breach refers to the defendant's breach of duty or failure to exercise the reasonable care that is expected of them. Attorneys gather evidence to show that the defendant acted improperly. A person who acts carelessly—unreasonably, without due care—violates the duty of care, and such behavior is labelled "negligent."
The Immediate Cause
This phase entails demonstrating that the defendant's acts or inaction directly caused the victim's injury. Attorneys attempt to demonstrate that if the defendant had done correctly, this injury would not have occurred.
Damages
The last item to establish is the type of damages sustained by the plaintiff as a direct result of a defendant's breach of duty. Physical harm, lost earnings and earning potential, pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and other damages may be awarded. Proper medical record management and review assist attorneys in better understanding the facts surrounding the injuries and preparing for cases.
Role of Medical Record Review in Burn Injury Claims
Dealing with numerous medical records is a significant challenge for personal injury attorneys in burn injury cases. A thorough analysis of medical records can assist attorneys in gathering the necessary facts and proving the other party's carelessness.
The details of the kind of accident that caused burn injuries, the degree of burns, the treatments undertaken by the physicians etc., forms the basis for the burn injury claim. Medical chronology picks up all these details from the medical records in a chronological order.
The patient’s condition soon after the accident or injury and the progress of the burn injury wounds in the medical records documented by various providers gain importance in the record reviews.
To get a deserving reparation for you or your loved one, the severity of the injury, cause of the injury, length of the treatment, scars that necessitate revision surgeries, etc., should be clearly documented in the medical records. An efficient reviewer can line up all these details in the medical summary for the easy perusal of the attorneys and jurors.
Any inconsistency in the medical records can impact your claim very badly. Medical record reviewers can identify the contradictory information and pen down in the summaries to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the claim.
The intensity of the burn injury and the cause of the injury also can be elicited from the witness testimonies and plaintiff’s statement to the different providers. The reviewer will ruffle through all kinds of reports including the police reports, fire department’s notes, ER reports and other imaging and lab reports to identify the vital facts about the injury.
How the burn injury affected the life of the victim gains importance in deciding the reparation. The impact of the injury on day to day activities, fulfilling daily needs, social as well as marital life, work life, etc., would be churned out during the medical record reviews.
Even the extreme anxiety or fear caused by the incident that led to the life-altering injuries needs to be picked out. The extend of psychological changes caused by the accident, the number of providers consulted and their diagnosis and prognosis, medications administered, and the progress of the condition will be clearly presented in the reviewed reports.
Some minor burn injury scars will fade soon but some will not. They persist for long. That too, scars in the face even cause depression in the mind of the victim and make him/her stay away from the society. The victim may need to undergo expensive and extensive revision procedures to re-sculpt the scarred face. Medical record reviews will outline the medical expenses for the treatment undergone by the victim and even cherry pick the future treatment cost for the expensive revision surgeries and the rehabilitation therapies.
Tail end:
Many medical record review companies offer complete medical record analysis to attorneys in burn injury claims. Either to plan out how to proceed with the claim or to decide on the witnesses to be deposed or trialed, efficient medical record reviews on burn injury records assist the attorneys.
Whether in the forms of medical chronologies, narrative summaries or deposition summaries, end to end medical record review solutions can fortify burn injury claims.
Getting compensation for burn injury involves establishing that the injury was caused by the negligence of the defendant and how his/her negligence led to the life-altering burn injury to the victim. To make that possible, only an efficient medical record review service with more experience can assist the attorneys.
Take advantage of the industry-best, skilled and experienced medical review professionals and legal nurse consultants to steer you burn injury victims.
