Medical Certificate of Residual Disability

If your traffic accident injury doesn’t fully recover and results in residual disability, you may apply for special compensation for Residual Disability provided by CALI. To apply for the compensation, you have to submit a Medical Certificate of Residual Disability with GIROJ. In this article, we take a closer look at the Medical Certificate of Residual Disability. 

What is a Medical Certificate of Residual Disability?

The official name of the certificate is “The Medical Certificate of Residual disability for Automobile Liability Insurance.” There is an A3 sized official form to fill in. Only licensed doctors can fill in the blank diagnosing your symptom is stabilized (See the article on Stabilized Symptoms), and your symptoms deserve to be acknowledged as Residual Disability. Theoretically, any licensed doctors can issue the certificate but ask the one who is the most familiar with your symptoms. For the issuance, it costs JPY5,000-10,000. 

The certificate and Doctors

Although the Medical Certificate of Residual Disability has the essential role of getting the grade of Residual Disability you deserve, many doctors are not familiar with how to write and what to write in the certificate. Sometimes they omit the critical part, or contrarily they specifically write the unnecessary things about your symptoms. We have even seen the document only with the name of the symptom and the doctor’s seal. Needless to say, the certificate without the necessary description doesn’t work for the application.

Qualification for the special compensation for residual disability is all by papers. GIROJ checks whether your symptoms deserve the compensation only by paper screening, while doctors generally don’t know much about the compensation system for traffic accident victims in Japan. Therefore, we recommend you to tell your doctor how to write it and what information they should include. In this regard, you have to take care not to be rude to your doctor. Before asking doctors to write the certificate, take full consideration into your doctor’s personality, ability, your symptoms, and conditions. Take the best ways when talking about the certificate with them.

Determination of the grade of Residual Disability

As you might understand, the grade of Residual Disability is determined by GIROJ, which only implements paper screening. Traffic accident victims have to submit all the documents and materials such as medical certificates, medical fees, images, test results, traffic accident status, etc. However, the most critical documents, such as the Medical Certificate of Residual Disability and Statement of Medical Expenses, can be issued only by doctors who generally don’t know much about the compensation system in traffic accident cases. If these documents are not appropriate, it is likely you cannot get the possible grade for your symptoms. 

What you should do for getting the well-written certificate of Residual Disability 

Learn the CALI’s compensation system as detailed as possible by yourself. You can use this web site for your learning. Know doctors are not specialized in making a good Certificate of Residual Disability.

Getting your Medical Record

If you’re keen to get the grade you deserve, sometimes only the Certificate of Residual Disability is not enough to prove your symptoms. In this case, review your medical record and make the additional documents to submit with GIROJ. To review your own medical record, you have to make Q&A sheets to your doctor and ask the doctor to answer your questions about your symptoms. This Q&A sheets sometimes work for proving your symptoms with GIROJ, and you can get the grade you deserve.