Catastrophic Accidents in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties

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If you currently live or grew up in Humboldt or Del Norte counties, you understand the unique challenges we have with medical care.  

It’s hard to find a doctor and this has gotten worse after St. Joseph Hospital has consolidated a lot of medical facilities in Humboldt County.  Del Norte county has only one hospital and that is owned by Sutter Health which is a big conglomerate.

This is important, because medical care is challenging for my clients, and medical care involving workers’ compensation is hard enough.  When you need medical care through workers’ compensation, it makes medical care almost impossible to find.

What complicates it more is catastrophic claims.  These claims are common in comparison to the rest of the State, because of our industry.  Our logging industry can cause some horrific injuries and these types of claims have to be handled in a certain way.

We’ve had multiple clients who have had amputations from terrible accidents and the only positive to this type of accident is that most are life flighted to bigger cities.  

However, after that care, they must go home and then the care in Humboldt and Del Norte County becomes the problem.

All of these challenges are relevant when you pick an attorney;  since we’ve handled these cases, we understand what is needed to keep your medical care and claim on track.  Many of these claims are considered “major claims” by insurance companies, but if the company doesn’t classify this type of claim this way, then treatment can be problematic.

These types of claims are unique in that injuries can require retrofitting of their car, changes at their home, and life care planning.  As much as I would never want to tell an injured worker they probably will never go back to work, many of them don’t.  In those cases, these claims become 100% disability cases and those claims have to be handled in a certain way.

If your attorney is not known by these major claims departments, your recovery could be much less than what it should be.  

I will be direct regarding choosing an attorney; I have had clients who hire an attorney out of the area come to me, because their attorney turned out to be not what they had hoped.