Virginia Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Blog

Chiropractor Billing Scam

Here's a scam we are seeing with some frequency. While we see it with health care providers in different specialties we see it mos often with chiropractors.

If you have been injured in an accident and are being treated by a chiropractor, pay attention as this may affect how much money you get from your case.

Here's how the chiropractic billing scam works:

You are in an accident and you seek out chiropractor for services.

You have excellent health insurance/health benefits for which you are paying a premium. Ordinarily your bills (or most of them would be covered).

Chiropractor asks you to sign a "lien agreement" or assignemtn of proceeds of the case to him. He then NEVER bills your insurance company but seeks to collect full amount of his bill from you.

Why would he do that? Typically the insurance company pays a set fee to the chiropractor which is less than the full amount of the bill. Understand that if the chiropractor accepts insurance he has already agreed to accept less than his full bill and he has agreed that he cannot bill you for the rest (or else what would be the purpose in having insurance?)

The chiropractor, knowing there is a personal injury case involved then "forgets" (or deliberately decides) to bill your insurance company because he want to bill YOU for the whole amount after your case settles.

What is WRONG with this scenario is that you have paid an insurance premium for the trade that you won't get stuck with the whole bill. Just because you were in a car accident doesn't change things but some chiropractors (and other health care providers) see your auto case as their big payday.

Its wrong and its your responsibility to make sure that you stay on top of whether the chiropractor is actually sending the bills to the insurance company. This will avoid a big surprise and FIGHT at the end of your case.