This page is all about obtaining a GP medico-legal report, a necessary piece of evidence when it comes to pursuing compensation.
To help you obtain such a report, you can connect with a medical reporting agency that has contacts in the appropriate field. We explain how you can arrange this.
General practitioners can assess a range of injuries that sometimes warrant pursuing the likes of a personal injury claim.
To help, a medico-legal expert can examine a claimant and deliver an opinion on the extent of the injury and what the long-term impacts are likely to be. Importantly, they can advise what the best form of treatment would be for recovery.
If you’d like to learn more, please contact us.
Select A Section
- What Is A Medico Legal Expert Witness?
- What Is A GP Medico-Legal Report?
- Do You Need A Medico-Legal Report?
- What Should A GP Medico-Legal Report Contain?
- How To Find Experts That Provide Medico-Legal Reports
- Obtaining GP Medico-Legal Reports
- Get Help Finding A GP Expert
What Is A Medico Legal Expert Witness?
A medico-legal expert witness is a medical professional who provides independent, impartial expertise to assist courts in understanding complex medical issues relevant to legal cases.
These expert witnesses are typically doctors, consultants, or other healthcare professionals with specialist knowledge in a particular field of medicine.
Their role is crucial in both civil and criminal cases, such as personal injury claims, medical negligence cases, or determining the cause of injury or death in criminal investigations.
In civil cases, a medico-legal expert witness may be called to assess the extent of injuries or medical conditions and provide reports that help determine compensation.
In criminal cases, they may give evidence regarding a victim’s injuries, mental health assessments, or post-mortem findings.
The expert witness’s primary responsibility is to offer objective, fact-based opinions based on their medical expertise. Their duty is to the court, not to the party that engages them, ensuring that their evidence remains unbiased.
They often prepare written reports and may be called to testify in court, explaining complex medical terminology and issues to judges, juries, and legal teams in a clear and understandable manner, aiding in the delivery of fair and informed verdicts.
What Is A GP Medico-Legal Report?
A medico-legal report is a piece of evidence that is addressed to the courts to give a detailed and impartial assessment of the injuries sustained. They can be generated to support and substantiate claims for personal injury.
It’s essential to bear in mind that medico-legal experts owe a duty to the courts, not the claimant, to be as factual and unbiased as possible. They cannot be tailored or slanted to fit the criteria as desired.
Reports have to be written by an impartial expert such as a GP (for general injuries like whiplash) or an orthopaedic surgeon (for specific bone injuries) that have had medico-legal training and certification. You therefore cannot use any GP, especially not the claimant’s own GP, as this would be deemed a conflict of interest.
Experts can also be a specialist or former practitioner in that particular field of medicine. It is considered that GPs and specialists such as this will have the necessary expertise not to just assess injuries properly, but deliver a reasoned, accurate prognosis.
The findings of the medico-legal report are shared with all parties involved in the claim. Solicitors can use its findings to prove the accident caused the injuries sustained and to help calculate potential compensation amounts.
Do You Need A Medico-Legal Report?
All claimants who are seeking personal injury compensation need to ensure that every aspect of their injuries is taken into consideration. The medical assessment allows an opportunity to do this.
The expert can put their findings into the medico-legal report, allowing you to make a much more measured calculation of potential compensation.
The Judicial College Guidelines can be used alongside the report when valuing injuries. As a consequence, you can arrive at a proposed figure of compensation that accurately reflects the claimant’s situation.
Medico-legal reports are recognised official documents that aim to assess the injury and future outlook. As such, whatever its contents reveal will be accepted by the court as fact.
What Should A GP Medico-Legal Report Contain?
A medico-legal report should offer clarification on injuries and the potential circumstances surrounding them. So, for example, it should provide an opinion as to whether the injuries are in line with those that could be caused by the accident.
Obviously, the precise nature of the injuries should be detailed and is of central importance. Also included are details about the impact that these injuries have had on the claimant’s quality of life. Treatment received so far could be discussed as well as how successful that treatment has been.
It will also be noted if treatment has not been as effective as desired and what alternatives may be suggested.
Detailed information about prognosis and recovery is very important. The findings of the report may indicate that prolonged physiotherapy or other treatments are required.
A medico-legal report alerts solicitors to this possibility and prompts them to take it into consideration.
How To Find Experts That Provide Medico-Legal Reports
When you require a medico-legal report, it can be difficult to source an expert to provide one. There are several options that you may consider, including looking online and working with medical agencies that have connections with medico-legal experts. However, there are factors to bear in mind:
- Double-check that any online information isn’t outdated. Some pages can be older and therefore less reliable.
- Experts may no longer do this type of work, they may have retired or are no longer available.
- In addition to this, some medico-legal experts will only accept work via agencies, meaning you need to source and approach them first.
We can offer an introductory service to a network of GP medico-legal report specialists across the country. Having a trusted resource like this can provide an invaluable shortcut to this stage of the personal injury claims process.
Obtaining GP Medico-Legal Reports
It’s a requirement to have a medico-legal report in cases of personal injury. The courts rely on this impartial and factual document to properly guide any awards of compensation and to help determine causation.
To access this service properly, the following checklist is useful:
- Firstly, seek out an expert either through a medical agency or directly
- Send an instruction letter detailing the circumstances of the injury and accident and ask the expert to examine the full extent of harm caused and likely prognosis.
- Tell the medico-legal expert that the report is needed for the purposes of compensation in a personal injury claim.
- Send the claimant’s relevant medical records. Importantly, medical agencies can also obtain medical records on their behalf if instructed.
- The medical agency can liaise with the medico-legal expert and the claimant to arrange for a mutually convenient time to do the examination.
- The claimant then attends the appointment, which can also be arranged at a location that is easily accessible for them.
- Medical agencies can then track or chase the report on your behalf. So this ensures that you and your client receive it in a timely fashion.
Get Help Finding A GP Medical Expert
Medical agencies can take the stress and aggravation out of arranging a GP medico-legal report. When you are planning and constructing a case for personal injury, either for yourself or a client, ease and simplicity at each stage are invaluable.
With this in mind, if you are looking for a medico-legal expert witness or GP medico-legal report services, we can help facilitate this. Contact our advisors today to see how we can streamline your search for an introduction to services that can help your claim.
You can also see this guide on medico-legal work produced by the government.