Brain injury professionals: Where do your support pathways actually go?

Warren Collins, Partner Solicitor-Advocate at Penningtons Manches Cooper LLP asks some uncomfortable questions.

When an online referral form looks like a lifeline, it is worth asking who built it and why.

There is a particular kind of organisation that has become increasingly visible in the serious injury landscape.

It presents itself as a patient support body, offering a warm and reassuring gateway to a range of services: benefits advice, counselling, peer support, clinical guidance, and, tucked within the list as naturally as any of the others, legal support for compensation claims.

The referral form is easy to complete. The language is compassionate and neutral.

A nurse, a case manager, or a ward social worker can fill it in on behalf of their patient with every reason to believe they are doing something genuinely helpful.

What is not always apparent from the front facing presentation is who actually owns the organisation. In certain cases, the answer might be lawyers.

In others, it is a provider of services to the legal profession with a commercial interest in the cases that flow through the door.

I raise some concerns.

The first is the corruption of trust.

The injured patient and their family are at their most vulnerable at the point of referral.

They are not in a position to conduct due diligence on the provenance of the organisation being presented to them.

They rely on the professional who makes the referral to have done so in their interests, and they reasonably assume that an entity presenting itself as a support organisation is operating for their benefit rather than for the commercial benefit of a law firm or a medicolegal services provider that has structured itself to receive them.

It is promotion of “free” services that funnel patients to the payment of professional fees that is problematic.

The second is the position of the referrer.

A clinical professional or case manager who channels patients through such an organisation may be entirely unaware of the ownership structure. That absence of knowledge does not dissolve the ethical dimension.

The question worth asking, before any referral is made, is not merely what services are on offer but who benefits when the patient arrives, and whether the answer to that question has been disclosed to anyone.

I make no criticism of the quality of legal work done by solicitors who operate through structures of this kind.

But a not for profit designation carries an implicit representation to the public that the organisation exists for the benefit of those it serves rather than those who founded it.

Where that representation is undermined by a commercial ownership relationship that is not disclosed on the face of the referral process, the public is not being given the information it needs to make an informed choice, and that is a problem regardless of how well the underlying legal work is performed.

Not sure who owns the support group?

Check the privacy policy or terms and conditions on their website or look at the owners of the business (by clicking on the “People” tab on the Companies House website) .

You may be surprised.

Find out more about Penningtons Manches Cooper at penningtonslaw.com