Listen as John V. Tucker describes what to do if your long term disability insurance company wants you to visit their doctor.
If your long term disability doctor wants you to go to their doctor, you will generally have to go to see them. After working on many long term disability cases including companies like Aetna, Cigna, Metlife, and others, I can tell you that you should attend your doctor visit with someone else. This is a way you protect yourself.
The insurance company’s doctor may have been hired over and over by the same company. Because of this, the odds of their doctor confirming your disability is very low. If your company is pressuring you to visit their doctor, then you should be cautious. They will likley have a private investigator follow you for a few days before the appointment, the day of your appointment, and a few days after your appointment. You will have to be careful with everything that that you say or do, as this private investigator is trying to catch you doing something that could be construed as evidence that you are faking your disability.
When you do go to that appointment, you’ll want to make sure that you take a friend or a nurse with you. They can be your extra set of ears, and they should take notes about the appointment. If you hire our law firm, we will take it to the next level. We will hire a professional videographer that will record your appointment. We want to make sure that we know exactly what happens in that room, and we will then have a record of the event.
As an example, let’s consider a previous client named Tom. Tom’s insurance wanted him to see their doctor. Even though he had very severe back pain, they had him drive over 2 hours to see the doctor. When he arrived he was in a significant amount of pain, and the doctor only met with him for 5 minutes. The doctor never even touched him. How can you assess a patient without touching them to check how their pain is? At the end of the appointment, the doctor proceeded to write a 9 page report of a physical that never happened. Unfortunately, Tom did not call us until AFTER his appointment. He did not bring a friend or someone to shoot video, and he did not have any proof of what happened at the exam with the insurance company’s doctor. Fortunately, we were able to find errors in the doctor’s report that still allowed us to win Tom’s claim, but it was much harder than it would have been had he hired a professional legal videographer. Their doctors are trained to outsmart you. You need everything you can get to level the playing field.
If an ERISA disability insurance company wants to send you to be examined by their doctor, call us toll free nationwide at (866) 233-5044 to learn more about your rights from one of our experienced disability attorneys.
Video TranscriptYour long-term disability insurance company wants you to go to their doctor. Do you have to go? I'm John Tucker, I'm a disability attorney and I handle long term disability insurance cases all across the United States. I represent people in claims against all the major insurance companies — Aetna, Cigna, MetLife, Standard, Prudential, Unum and others — the answer to the question usually is yes.
You have to go but don't go alone there are things you can do to protect yourself. Keep in mind that that doctor that they're sending you to is their doctor. Probably hired by them many times. In our office we have a phrase, they know where their bread is buttered. So the odds on them saying you're disabled are pretty slim and when you're going to be sent to their doctor that needs to raise red flags all over the place for you. So what can you do?
First, know this, if they're sending you out to their doctor the odds are that they have a private eye following you probably for a couple of days before, at least the day of the exam and maybe even a couple of days after. Be careful about what's happening in your life and what you do. Pay attention to who's around you.
When you do have to go to the appointment bring a friend if you have a friend that's a nurse that's even better. Bring that person with you and have them make notes. For our clients we go a step further, we hire a professional videographer. That person brings video equipment into the exam room and actually record everything. Why do we do that? Because the only way we know everything that happened in that room is to get it on video.
Let me tell you a story about a client of mine named Tom. Before I represented Tom he agreed to let his insurance company send them to their doctor. They made him drive for 2 hours and Tom had a very significant back problem so by the time he got there he was in a lot of pain even though it had stopped several times on the way.
When he went into the doctor he was amazed at the doctor only spent five minutes with him and literally never touched him. Did not do a physical exam at all but when it was all said and done the doctor wrote a nine-page report that described a physical exam that never happened.
Tom had not brought a friend and he didn't have a videographer so there was no way to prove that the doctor had lied. Now in Tom's case, we found other ways to address that, we found other ways to address that that doctor was their hired gun and we were able to win his claim but it made it a lot harder because Tom didn't have the friend or the videographer with him.
If your insurance company has decided to send you to their doctor, call me at the number on your screen. I've handled cases for people like you all over the country for over 25 years and I'm happy to talk with you about your rights. I’m John Tucker. Thanks for watching.
