Personal Injury continues to have the largest share of contingency based fees so the flow of work is critical. Essentially, this means that the firm does not get paid until the matter is either settled out of court or won at trial. Similar cases such as Medical Malpractice, Mass Torts and Class Actions also deal with workflow and tracking passable expenses and set percentages are payable to the firm and then the client.
Thus a firm that does primary litigation in one of the aforementioned practice areas, the flow of work in order to bring the matter to closure must be focused specifically on speed, compliance, reviews, out of pocket expenses, and the like.
From the moment that the attorney agrees to represent the client, there are two forces pressing he/she daily – get revenue into the firm for the time and expenses associated with the case, and keep the client informed and happy with the status of the case.
There are many case management tools that can also incorporate this concept of workflow management. Often basic components such as a memo on the firm calendar, acts as a reminder that information needs to be in hand by a specific date. Unfortunately, this simple annotation is not the equivalent of triggering another activity as is possible with a dedicated workflow available on popular document management systems.
An important part of PI workflow is securing medical records from one or more healthcare providers. This is often a manual process of request, file a HIPAA request form (with necessary payment), and thereafter begin the process of follow up calls to the healthcare providers by firm paralegals, administrators and even associates. It’s simple. Without medical records, most Personal Injury litigation comes to a halt and all the ticklers in the universe won’t help if there are any errors in the request, the date of the HIPAA form, and/or a missing payment to the provider.
A better alternative is the use of outsourced medical record retrieval. Their best-practices virtually eliminates the typical speed-bump in the process of collecting records. The professional medical record retrieval company can catch errors or omissions before they are submitted, thus eliminating wasting time, delayed revenue, and client angst.
Select a proven leader in Medical Records Retrieval.
Chuck Dart is the President of Record Retrieval Solutions (RRS), and a medical records industry leader for more than 25 years. Visit www.recordrs.com and learn how RRS can help make your workflow better, faster, and likely less expensive that your own staff handling the requests. Have a need today, call Chuck at 866-211-7866.
If you happen to be attending the CAOC / CCTLA event at Lake Tahoe in June, why not schedule a meeting in advance with Chuck and his team so we can share our latest vision for the future, while focusing on delivering you what you need today.