Why Medical Liens Are an Important Tool for Your Clinic’s Personal Injury Practice
John D. Webber, Managing Shareholder GLP Attorneys WSCA Leadership Level Corporate Partner
What happens if you have a personal injury patient with a claim for damages against a wrongdoer (in legal terms, a tortfeasor), but they find themselves in the following situations:
• The patient has no personal injury protection (PIP) or medical payments (Med Pay) coverage available?
• The patient has no health insurance, or their health insurance will not cover all or part of treatment in your clinic?
• The patient had PIP/Med Pay/health insurance, but the benefits have exhausted, and more treatment is needed?
If the patient’s medical treatment is still reasonable, necessary, and related to the injury causing event, a properly completed and filed medical lien can ensure that you receive payment from the at-fault insurance company for the unpaid balance owed. If that insurance company settles with your patient and you have still not been paid for your services, the filed medical lien may force
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the insurance company to pay twice. First to your patient, and then again to you.
It is important that you use all available PIP and health insurance available to your personal injury patient before you move on to holding bills based on a medical lien. Medical liens are not a substitute to billing PIP, or health insurance once PIP exhausts, as primary first-party payment sources.
As a prerequisite to filing a medical lien, make sure that your clinic discloses to the patient that you use medical liens as part of your billing and collection practices (RCW 60.44.020(2)). This can be accomplished by adding language to your standard intake forms disclosing this business practice at the time treatment begins.
Under RCW 60.44, a medical lien completed and filed in the county where the services were provided puts the tortfeasor’s insurance company on notice that you are owed for services rendered to the wrongfully injured party (your patient). Keep the following points in mind to ensure that medical liens work correctly for your clinic:
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