What is a bodily injury demand package? A complete guide for adjusters
A bodily injury demand package is the file a claimant's attorney sends to an insurer to demand payment for an injury. It bundles the demand letter with the evidence behind it: medical records, bills, lost-wage proof, the police report, photos, and often expert or IME reports. The package argues liability, ties the injury to the incident, totals the damages, and usually names a dollar figure and a deadline to respond.
For the adjuster on the other side, it is the document that decides the claim. Read it well and you settle for the right number. Miss something in it and you overpay, underpay, or hand the other side an opening. This guide walks through what a demand package contains, how to review one, the issues that move value the most, and where AI now fits.
On this page
- What is a bodily injury demand package
- Demand letter vs demand package
- What is inside a demand package
- The anatomy of a demand letter
- How to review a demand package, step by step
- The four issues that move value most
- Building the medical chronology
- Billing validation and claim leakage
- Deadlines, time-limited demands, and bad faith
- Why cycle time matters more in 2026
- Common mistakes in demand package review
- How AI changes demand package review
- What to look for in AI for this work
- Demand package glossary
- Frequently asked questions
What is a bodily injury demand package
A bodily injury demand package is a settlement demand plus its proof. A claimant, almost always through a personal injury attorney, assembles the documents that support the injury claim and sends them to the at-fault party's insurer. The package says, in effect: here is what happened, here is who is at fault, here is the harm, here is what it is worth, and here is how long you have to pay.
Demand packages show up across casualty lines: auto liability after a crash, general liability after a slip and fall or a premises injury, and workers' compensation and medical malpractice in their own forms. The common thread is a person claiming physical injury and money to compensate for it, backed by medical evidence.
The insurer's job is to test that claim. An adjuster reads the package to confirm the story holds up, to value the injury fairly, and to respond within the deadline. On a small soft-tissue claim that can take an hour. On a serious injury with years of treatment it can take a full day of reading, and the file can run past a thousand pages.
Demand letter vs demand package
These two terms get used loosely, so it helps to separate them.
The demand letter is the attorney's written argument. It lays out the facts, argues liability, describes the injuries and treatment, summarizes the damages, and states a settlement figure, often with a deadline and sometimes a demand for policy limits.
The demand package is that letter plus the evidence: the medical records, itemized bills, imaging, wage documentation, police report, photographs, and any expert reports. The letter makes the claims. The package is supposed to prove them. A careful adjuster reads the letter for the argument, then checks every claim in it against the documents behind it.
What is inside a demand package
Most packages include some mix of the following. The order and completeness vary by attorney and by line of business.
The demand letter
The attorney's argument for liability, the injury narrative, a damages summary, and a settlement figure with a deadline. On serious claims it may demand the full policy limits.
Medical records
Treatment notes from every provider the claimant saw: the emergency room, primary care, orthopedics, physical therapy, chiropractic, pain management, imaging centers, and surgeons. These are the core of the file and usually the largest part.
Medical bills
Itemized charges, often hundreds of line items across multiple providers. Bills drive the economic damages and are the first place leakage appears.
Diagnostic imaging and reports
MRI, X-ray, and CT images with the radiologist's read. These support or undercut the claimed severity of an injury.
Lost-wage documentation
Pay stubs, employer letters, and tax records that support a wage-loss claim. Self-employed claimants may include profit-and-loss statements.
Police or incident report
The official account of the crash or incident, including any citations and the responding officer's notes on fault.
Photographs
Images of injuries, the scene, and vehicle or property damage. Low property damage in an auto case, for example, invites questions about injury severity.
Expert and IME reports
Opinions on causation, prognosis, permanent impairment, and future care. An independent medical examination (IME) report often carries the most weight on disputed causation.
Witness statements and liens
Third-party accounts of the incident, plus any medical liens or subrogation interests that affect how a settlement gets paid out.
A routine package runs 200 to 600 pages. Complex injury files run longer, and they often arrive as scanned PDFs that an adjuster has to read by hand. Handwritten notes, faxed records, and foreign-language reports all show up, which is part of why review is slow.
The anatomy of a demand letter
Reading the demand letter well is faster once you know its parts. Most follow a similar shape:
- Statement of facts. The attorney's version of how the incident happened and who is at fault.
- Liability argument. Why the insured is legally responsible, often citing the police report or a statute.
- Injury and treatment narrative. A walk through the medical care, from the first visit to the current condition.
- Damages summary. Economic damages such as medical bills and lost wages, plus non-economic damages such as pain and suffering.
- The demand. A specific dollar figure, a deadline, and sometimes a policy-limits demand or a time limit.
The letter is an advocacy document. Every number in it is the claimant's best case. The adjuster's task is to check each one against the records, because the letter and the file do not always agree.
How to review a demand package, step by step
The review is not one task. It is a stack of them, and each one has to hold up later if the claim goes to litigation. Here is the sequence most adjusters follow.
- Confirm liability. Does the file support the attorney's version of fault? Read the police report, witness statements, and scene photos. Note any comparative fault that reduces the claim.
- Establish causation. Did this incident cause this injury, or is the file describing something older? Look for the first treatment date relative to the incident, and for any gap that suggests an unrelated cause.
- Check for pre-existing conditions. Prior treatment for the same body part changes the value. Search the records for earlier injuries, degenerative findings, and past imaging of the same region.
- Build the medical chronology. Put every visit, diagnosis, procedure, and gap in treatment in date order. This is the backbone of the evaluation.
- Validate the billing. Find duplicate charges, unrelated treatment, and inflated codes. Compare charges against usual and customary rates. This is where leakage hides.
- Assess damages and apportionment. Total the economic and non-economic damages, then separate what this defendant owes from what belongs to a pre-existing condition or another party.
- Set the reserve and respond. Set a reserve and a settlement range, document the reasoning, and respond in writing before the deadline.
Done by hand on a 400-page file, this takes hours, sometimes a full day. Multiply by a caseload and the math gets ugly fast. Every step also has to be documented, because a reserve or a settlement that cannot be explained later is a problem in its own right.
The four issues that move value most
Four questions decide most of what a bodily injury claim is worth. An adjuster who gets these right values the claim well, and can defend the number.
Liability
Who is at fault, and by how much. In comparative-fault states, a claimant found partly responsible recovers less. Liability sets the ceiling on the claim before damages even enter the picture.
Causation
Whether the incident actually caused the claimed injury. A herniated disc that first appears in the records two months after a low-speed crash raises a real causation question. Causation is often the single most contested issue in a serious file.
Pre-existing conditions
Whether the claimant had prior problems with the same body part. Degenerative changes, old injuries, and earlier imaging all reduce the share of harm that this incident caused. Missing a pre-existing condition is one of the most expensive review errors.
Apportionment
How to divide the harm between this incident and everything else. Apportionment turns a causation finding into a number, and it is where a careful chronology pays off directly.
Building the medical chronology
A medical chronology is a date-ordered timeline of every visit, diagnosis, procedure, and gap in treatment. It is the tool that turns a stack of records into a story an adjuster can evaluate.
A good chronology shows the first treatment date, the course of care, the providers involved, the diagnoses over time, and any gaps. Gaps matter. A claimant who stops treatment for four months and then returns just before filing raises questions about how serious the injury really was. So does treatment that keeps going long after the records show recovery.
Building a chronology by hand is slow and error-prone, because the dates are scattered across hundreds of pages from different providers in different formats. It is also the step most worth getting right, since causation, apportionment, and damages all rest on it. This is one of the tasks AI handles well, as long as every date it lists links back to the page it came from.
Billing validation and claim leakage
Claim leakage is money paid out that a fuller review would have saved. In demand package review, leakage usually comes from a handful of sources:
- Unrelated treatment. Charges for care that has nothing to do with the incident, mixed into the bills.
- Duplicate billing. The same service billed twice across providers or dates.
- Inflated or upcoded charges. Procedures billed at a higher level than the records support.
- Missed pre-existing conditions. Paying for the full injury when part of it predates the incident.
- Reserves set on a skim. Valuing the claim on the demand letter's numbers rather than the records behind them.
Each of these leaks money quietly, one claim at a time, and it adds up across a book of business. Catching leakage is a large part of what accurate review is for, and it is a direct reason to read the whole file rather than the summary the other side wrote.
Deadlines, time-limited demands, and bad faith
Demand packages come with clocks. The most important is the time-limited demand.
A time-limited demand asks the insurer to accept a settlement, often at policy limits, within a set window such as 30 days. The tactic puts pressure on the insurer: accept quickly, or risk a later verdict above the limits that the insurer may have to pay because it did not settle when it could. In many states, mishandling a time-limited demand can expose the insurer to a bad-faith claim, which removes the protection of the policy limits.
That is why cycle time is not only an efficiency question. A demand that sits unreviewed while the clock runs is a real exposure. The adjuster needs a complete, accurate read of a large file inside a short window, which is exactly the pressure that makes fast, source-linked review valuable. Note that the specific rules for time-limited demands and bad faith vary by state, so any process built around them should be reviewed with counsel.
Why cycle time matters more in 2026
Two trends have raised the stakes on injury claims. The first is social inflation: jury awards for bodily injury have grown faster than economic inflation, driven in part by litigation funding and shifting juror attitudes. The second is the rise of nuclear verdicts, awards in the tens of millions that were once rare and are now a recurring risk on serious claims.
Both trends reward carriers that evaluate claims quickly and accurately. A file valued well and settled early avoids the litigation path where a nuclear verdict can happen. A file valued on a rushed skim is the one that turns into a problem. Faster, more accurate demand package review is a direct hedge against both trends.
Common mistakes in demand package review
The same errors show up again and again:
- Trusting the demand letter's summary. The letter is advocacy. The records are the evidence, and they do not always match.
- Missing a pre-existing condition buried in a prior provider's notes hundreds of pages in.
- Skimming the billing and paying unrelated or duplicate charges.
- Overlooking treatment gaps that undercut the causation argument.
- Setting a reserve on incomplete information and struggling to move it later.
- Missing the deadline on a time-limited demand and creating bad-faith exposure.
-
Most of these trace back to the same root cause: too many pages, too little time. That is the problem AI is now good at, provided it can show its work.
How AI changes demand package review
AI reads the full file in minutes and surfaces what matters: the timeline, the gaps, the contradictions, the billing that does not add up. The catch is trust. A general chatbot can summarize a PDF, and it can also invent a detail that was never in the record. In a claim file, an invented impairment rating or a missed prior surgery is a liability, not a rough edge.
amaise was built for this specific problem. It rebuilds the claim file into a knowledge graph it calls CaseDNA, then answers every question with click-to-evidence: each finding links back to the exact source page it came from. No generated facts, no filled-in gaps. The line amaise uses with adjusters is direct: don't trust the AI, click and check it yourself.
In practice that means the medical chronology comes back with every date linked to its record, the billing review flags charges you can open and confirm, and the causation and pre-existing findings point to the exact pages that support them. In amaise deployments, teams report up to 84% less time on document review, 4x greater precision in their evaluations, and a 10% reduction in payouts while keeping decisions fair. The work that took a day takes minutes, and every number traces to a page an adjuster can open.
amaise works across auto liability, general liability, workers' compensation, and medical malpractice, and it is built for the insurance side: adjusters, claims managers, IMEs, defense attorneys, and the VPs and chief claims officers who answer for the outcome. You can see how it handles a real file on the Bodily Injury AI page.
What to look for in AI for demand package review
If you are evaluating AI for this work, these criteria separate a tool you can rely on from one you cannot:
- Source-linking you can verify. Every finding should open to the exact page behind it, in one click.
- Coverage of your lines. Confirm the tool handles your actual lines of business, not only auto.
- Handling of messy files. Scanned, handwritten, and foreign-language pages are the norm, not the exception.
- Chronology and billing depth. A summary is easy. A defensible chronology and a real billing review are the hard parts.
- Security and trust. Claim files are sensitive. Check the vendor's security posture and data handling. amaise documents this in its Trust Center.
- A trial on your own files. Ask to run the tool on one of your real demand packages before you commit.
For a side-by-side look at the main options, see our guide to the best AI tools for casualty and bodily injury claims, and for why verification matters so much, read explainable AI for insurance claims.
Demand package glossary
Apportionment. Dividing the harm between the current incident and pre-existing or unrelated causes.
Bad faith. An insurer's failure to handle a claim reasonably, which can expose it to liability beyond the policy limits.
Causation. The link between the incident and the claimed injury.
Claim leakage. Money paid out that a fuller review would have saved.
Comparative fault. A rule that reduces a claimant's recovery by their share of responsibility.
Demand letter. The attorney's written argument and settlement figure.
Economic damages. Measurable losses such as medical bills and lost wages.
IME. Independent medical examination, an evaluation by a physician retained to give an opinion on causation or impairment.
Medical chronology. A date-ordered timeline of treatment built from the records.
Non-economic damages. Losses such as pain and suffering that have no fixed price.
Policy limits. The most an insurance policy will pay for a covered claim.
Pre-existing condition. A prior injury or condition affecting the same body part.
Reserve. The amount an insurer sets aside to pay a claim.
Social inflation. The trend of injury awards rising faster than economic inflation.
Subrogation. One party's right to recover a payment from another responsible party.
Time-limited demand. A settlement demand that must be accepted within a set window.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a demand letter and a demand package?
The demand letter is the attorney's written argument and settlement figure. The demand package is the letter plus all the supporting evidence: medical records, bills, reports, wage proof, and photos.
How long is a typical bodily injury demand package?
Most run 200 to 600 pages. Serious-injury and long-treatment files can run past a thousand pages, and many arrive as scanned PDFs.
How long does it take to review one?
By hand, several hours to a full day for a large file. AI built for claims, like amaise, brings that down to minutes while linking each finding to its source page.
What is a time-limited demand?
A time-limited demand asks the insurer to accept a settlement, often at policy limits, within a set window such as 30 days. Missing the window can expose the insurer to a bad-faith claim for any verdict above the limits. The rules vary by state.
What is claim leakage in demand package review?
Leakage is money lost to missed details: an overlooked pre-existing condition, an unrelated medical charge, an inflated code, or a reserve set without a full read of the file.
What is a medical chronology?
A medical chronology is a date-ordered timeline of every visit, diagnosis, procedure, and gap in treatment, built from the records so an adjuster can see the injury and treatment story at a glance.
Can AI review a demand package without hallucinating?
A general chatbot can invent details. amaise links every answer to the exact source page through its CaseDNA knowledge graph, so an adjuster can verify each finding rather than trust it blind.
Who reviews a bodily injury demand package?
On the insurance side, the claims adjuster leads the review, often with a nurse reviewer, a defense attorney, and a claims manager on larger files. amaise is built for this insurance-side team.