Whiplash Red Flags: What you need to know to protect yourself.

Whiplash injuries are among the most misunderstood conditions after a car accident. While many patients expect a straightforward path to diagnosis and treatment, the reality can be far more complicated. Red flags often emerge when lawyers, insurance companies, and even some healthcare providers approach these cases with financial or administrative priorities rather than patient recovery.

Mislabeling injuries, downplaying nerve involvement, or delaying necessary care can all compromise healing and increase long-term disability risk. Understanding these warning signs empowers injured individuals to protect their rights, access proper medical care, and make informed decisions during the claims process.

Red Flags to Watch for After a Whiplash Injury

• Pressure to settle quickly – Being urged by insurers or lawyers to close your claim before a full medical assessment is complete.

  • Clinical Example: I recently evaluated a patient with radiographic evidence of a 4 mm vertebral shift, findings that correlate with a 35–55% Whole Person Impairment (WPI) and should have qualified her for CAT designation. Unfortunately, the lawyer ignored these objective findings because the insurer had surveillance video of the patient performing everyday activities.

  • This reflects a serious misunderstanding of whiplash traumatology. Whiplash is a progressive injury state: patients may still complete their normal activities, but usually not as long, not as much, and not with the same capacity as before due to the body’s protective responses. Without a proper grasp of injury mechanisms, claimants risk losing both benefits and the treatment they genuinely need.

• Minimizing or mislabeling your injuries – Providers or adjusters describing symptoms as “minor” despite documented pain, dizziness, or neurological signs.

  • Recently, a multinational insurer denied benefits to a patient suffering from chronic pain, citing the notion that their injuries were in the “minor injury guideline (MIG)”, despite a traffic-injury guideline they helped pay for explicitly stating that the term “minor injury” is inappropriate and misleading.

  • According to the Enabling Recovery from Common Traffic Injuries: A Focus on the Injured Person report, the Collaboration rejected the “minor injury” label, arguing that it trivializes serious suffering .

  • By dismissing the patients condition as “MIG” anyway, the insurer effectively ignored scientific consensus and deprived the patient of deserved treatment. Understanding the true nature of whiplash and chronic post-collision injury is critical, not just for clinical care but for realizing one’s legal and insurance rights.

• Delays in approving care – Long waits or repeated denials for recommended imaging, specialist referrals, or rehabilitation.

  • In clinic it is not uncommon to submit a treatment plan for example in February or March for treatment services, and once Medical Assessments are completed and rebutted, obtain a final determination on that plan in September or October. Months will pass for the simple adjudication of a treatment plan because the industry lacks specified training and understanding of this injury condition.

• Switching or substituting benefits – An adjuster changing your request (e.g., from an assessment to a treatment plan) and then denying it as “not covered.”

  • Just yesterday an Auto Insurer denied a request for a Chronic Pain Assessment. The auto insurers response, Chronic Pain Treatment is covered under OHIP. Somehow the adjuster was able to change the benefit from a Chronic Pain Assessment to help determine CAT impairment, to Chronic Pain Treatment, and then deny Treatment, which was never asked for, under the premise that it is OHIP Covered.

  
  

• Ignoring documented conditions – Concussion, vestibular issues, or nerve impairment noted in your records but dismissed in reports or decisions.

  • Because of the lack of specialized whiplash traumatology training among many healthcare providers, and the high fees paid for cursory evaluations, critical injuries are often overlooked. Insurers frequently send patients with suspected vestibular injuries to an ENT specialist, but an ENT typically assesses only the inner ear. They do not evaluate the full neuromusculoskeletal and sensorimotor systems that, when injured in whiplash, can profoundly affect balance, coordination, and the vestibular system as a whole. Providers trained in the pathomechanics of whiplash understand these complex interactions and can detect injuries that others routinely miss.

    
    

• Conflicts of interest – Assessors chosen for cost rather than expertise in chronic pain, concussion, or whiplash injuries.

  
  

• Lack of transparent communication – Unclear explanations for decisions, missing documentation, or refusal to share reports with you.