Thirty days after a crash, a personal injury intake team has to decide on a lead with very little in hand. The medical records haven't been requested yet. The client may not remember which clinic they visited.
What the firm usually does have is the police crash report. And it usually gets read for one thing: who was cited.
That's a fraction of what the report holds. It records the vehicles, the point of impact, damage areas, seat positions, airbag deployment, injury codes, transport status, the officer's narrative, and who owns and insures each vehicle.
Read together, those fields describe a mechanism. The mechanism points to the likely injuries, the treatment path, and the records that will decide the file.
Our Police Report Intelligence report is built to read the crash report that way. Here's what it contains, how it scores a lead, and what it's designed to change at intake.
What the report is
The Lead Evaluation & Injury Outlook is a four-page report, plus a one-page snapshot for quick triage meetings. We prepare it at the lead stage, before any medical record exists.
The source is the police crash report, together with any court record or investigator file the firm supplies. Findings cite the page of the source they come from. Anything on a redacted page, or from outside the crash report, is flagged as such.
The snapshot carries the essentials on one page: score, tier, bottom line, liability, crash mechanics, top injury outlook, projected value and the first three actions. The full report shows the reasoning behind each one.
One score, three questions
Every report produces a score out of 100, built from three weighted questions:
• Injury severity (40%): what the mechanism and published field data suggest, checked against what the crash report actually codes: injury severity, EMS transport and airbag deployment.
• Liability clarity (35%): the citation, contributing circumstances, the officer's narrative, and the fault rule of the state where the crash happened.
• Recoverability (25%): who pays, and how much is realistically available once other injured occupants are counted.
The score maps to a tier: Pass (0–54), Investigate (55–79) or Sign (80+). Each tier comes with a recommendation, such as "Sign, Priority A" or "Investigate, Fast-Track", and a dated action plan.
Page 1: Lead evaluation
The first page answers whether the lead is worth the firm's time, and why.
• Bottom line: one sentence a decision-maker can act on.
• What the crash report establishes: fault, the claimant's vehicle and conduct, occupants and their injury codes, and the roadway, each with its page reference.
• Liability under the crash state's rules: the defense argument to expect, and where the answer sits.
• Who pays: the at-fault carrier, the vehicle owner, a possible employer or commercial policy, and the claimant's own UM/UIM.
• Score breakdown: why each factor was held where it was.
State law matters more than most screens allow. The same facts read differently in Virginia, where any fault by the claimant can bar recovery, than in Montana's modified comparative fault system.
In one of our sample reports, a Virginia claimant was turning left when a red-light runner hit her. That invites a lookout argument. The report pointed to the answers already on the page: her green light, and a vehicle diagrammed stopped at the red beside the truck, a neutral witness the officer never named.
Ownership matters too. When the striking vehicle is titled to a business, the report flags respondeat superior and a possible commercial policy. When several occupants are injured, it flags that they may share one per-accident limit, and that a conflict check comes before representing more than one.
Page 2: Injury outlook
This is where the report goes furthest beyond a citation-only read. A mechanism diagram shows how the vehicles met and how the claimant's body moved.
Region-by-region screening tiers follow: High, Mod-High and Moderate. Each region lists the mechanism, the projected course of care, and the records to collect.
Two examples show why the mechanism matters more than the injury code alone.
Seat position. When a vehicle is struck on the side opposite the claimant's seat, she is a far-side occupant. The car is pushed out from under her, and she moves toward the impact, into the console and the belt. Published field data on far-side crashes put most serious injuries in the chest, abdomen and head, so the outlook leads there instead of the usual neck and back.
Vehicle mismatch. When a heavy-duty pickup rear-ends a sedan, its bumper can ride over the sedan's rear bumper beam. The beam is bypassed, the trunk crushes, and more energy reaches the occupants through the seatbacks.
A roadside code of "suspected minor injury" can understate that crash. Neck and back pain after a rear impact often peaks days to weeks later, after the officer has coded the scene.
The tiers are screening tiers, not probabilities or diagnoses. The first medical record re-ranks them.
Page 3: Medical economics and case value
Page three projects the total cost of care, from first evaluation through maximum medical improvement and beyond. It breaks that cost into phases, such as acute care, conservative care, imaging and injections, surgery if indicated, and long-term care, each as a billed-charge band.
A treatment timeline marks where the lead stands today. That lets the team see at a glance what care should already have happened, and where the file forks toward a conservative or surgical path.
An indicative settlement band is broken out by scenario: resolves with conservative care, confirmed imaging finding, or surgical recommendation. A short note names the one or two records that move the number most. These are bands, not appraisals.
Page 4: Action plan and verification
The last page turns the analysis into work the intake team can start the same day.
• First steps: the questions for the first call, the records to order first, and the evidence to preserve before it disappears. That evidence includes airbag control modules on towed vehicles, fleet dash-cam and telematics, nearby business video, and signal-phase records.
• Coverage and proof, within 14 days: written limits requests, the claimant's own UM/UIM, and whether the at-fault vehicle was being used for work.
• Verify before relying on the screen: what the crash report can't settle, such as what a "Serious Injury" code actually was, seat position, transport status and prior conditions.
• Screen at intake: the problems a crash report can't show, including delayed onset, gaps in treatment, aggravation of a pre-existing condition, post-concussive symptoms and psychiatric injury.
The page closes with what moves the file up and what moves it down, so the team knows which record to watch for.
What it changes at intake
Liability and injury are scored separately. A cited driver tells you who is at fault, not whether anyone is hurt. In one sample report, a textbook rear-end with a careless-driving citation scored 77, Investigate, because no treatment was known at day 30. The recommendation was one question for the first call and a decision within 14 days.
The mechanism is read, not just the code. Seat position, vehicle mismatch, airbag deployment and damage areas tell the team where to look and what to request.
Time-sensitive work comes first. Evidence that disappears within weeks, and records that decide value, go to the top of the plan. In an aggravation case, for example, that means locking the claimant's pre-crash spine records at intake, before the defense finds them.
What it is, and what it isn't
The report is a screen, built from the crash report and published population-level outcome data. Injury tiers are not diagnoses, dollar figures are billed-charge bands, and settlement bands are not appraisals. It isn't a medical opinion or legal advice.
That's by design. At day 30, the value isn't certainty. It's knowing which record will decide the file, which evidence is about to disappear, and which question to ask on the first call.
See a sample report
We've prepared three de-identified sample reports: a far-side intersection crash, a red-light broadside where fault was settled in court, and a heavy-truck rear-end with an unproven injury.
Walk through a crash report from your own caseload with our team or to get an sample of the report: https://medicalinsightz.com/contact
Medical Insightz provides medical record review and medical-legal services for law firms.