We deal with medical liens on a daily basis.

What exactly is a medical lien? #

Well, when you’ve been injured in a car accident, and you’ve been seen by a doctor or hospital, they know that you may have a settlement coming down the road, and in order to protect their rights to protect their bills, they sent out notices to you to insurance companies, to lawyers and establish a right to get some of that money back.

Why do they still do that if you have private health insurance? #

Well, the answer is simple, not sometimes most of the time they think they’re gonna get more money out of it. Them going after you know your settlement instead of your health insurance. That’s a topic for a whole other day. But suffice to say they get more money if they are able to get them to get it directly from the car insurance company. So, who is entitled to establish a medical lien in Missouri? And it’s usually, hospitals, podiatrists, dentists, physical therapists, chiropractors, doctors. And how do they establish that lien? In order for it to be legally enforceable, they’ve got to follow the law and there’s a statue in Missouri that outlines exactly what they have to do and if you skip a step the lien is not valid.

So basically they have to send it in writing, it is certified mail. It’s got to give the name of the party and identified the correct lien holder. It’s got to identify the correct insurance company and obviously the amount of that lien.

How does the lien law work at the end of the case? #

Well, the statue basically allows the medical liens holder to receive fifty per cent of the net settlement from the car accident. So let’s assume you are entitled to get twenty thousand dollars after attorneys fees and expenses and there are liens out there. The maximum that those lien holders would be allowed to get is ten thousand dollars.
So, sometimes it works in our favour. Because the bills are out there, and we’ve got liens. And, unfortunately, sometimes the settlement is really not that great because the other driver had minimum coverage.
And then sometimes it really works in our client’s advantage and we in our office try to get these liens reduced as much as we can at the end of the case because the more we get those reduced the more clients make of injuries.

Hope this helps and if you have any questions, call me at 314-352-6800. Thank you!

Bajric & Ramic Law Office
Nedim Ramic – Auto Accident Lawyer – Personal Injury Attorney