Medical record retrieval is an important step after a car accident. In the United States, medical records are required for insurance claims, court trials, and other procedures. As a lawyer or insurance provider, it is, therefore, imperative that you know the right way to get the appropriate medical records from the hospital or your client’s doctor.
Did your client in the United States get hurt or suffer an injury because of the negligence of their doctor? Your client may be eligible for compensation.
But to win a medical malpractice lawsuit, your law firm must be able to provide substantial proof.
Digital technology has irrevocably enhanced the ways businesses operate and function. Now, more information is available at employees’ fingertips than ever thanks to the internet, enhancing their capabilities and eliminating time-consuming processes like sourcing or exchanging information between teams.
Medical records play a key role in a variety of legal cases and insurance claims. With certain practice areas being dependent on the information they contain, it’s important to have a quick, reliable, and secure way of retrieving them. Moreover, if the process is handled incorrectly, it can result in a breach of regulatory compliance.
Electronic medical records (EMRs) retrieval has been an arduous, yet vital task for litigators and insurance companies. But it no longer has to involve rifling through stacks of records in dusty filing cabinets and relying entirely on cumbersome delivery processes.
For decades, medical records retrieval was a long and time-consuming task that caused backlogs of work for litigators, insurers, and others. But in 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) act was ratified in an attempt to simplify and streamline the process in accordance with privacy and security controls.
Retrieving medical records when putting together a case has always been a laborious task, with requests typically taking up to a month to complete. It can get costly too, not just because you usually have to pay for each record, but also because it can take multiple working hours to prepare and submit requests, as well as track progress.
You need all the time you can get to put together a compelling case, but if a lot of that time is being spent on retrieving important documents, then it won’t take long before the costs start piling up and delays become a part of the process. Retrieving medical records has traditionally been one of the most time-consuming steps of all, partly due to compliance processes and a lack of standardization and completeness with many records.
Whether insurance providers need to request medical records to support claims or attorneys need official records to put together a legal case, records retrieval has traditionally been a cumbersome and time-consuming task.
It’s something that in-house teams often struggle with, particularly in the case of smaller businesses that might not have a department dedicated to the task.
Medical records retrieval is a vital process for healthcare providers and insurance companies, but it’s something that takes a fair bit of time due to the sensitive nature of the information involved. That’s why it’s so important to have a clearly defined plan for requesting and managing records retrievals, which includes full end-to-end processing and auditing.