Insurance claims administrators as well as law firms and lawyers handling personal injury, product litigation, medical malpractice, and workers’ compensation cases will have to deal with medical records. Lawyers need these records to find the medical evidence they need to win their case, while insurance companies require the same to approve claims. Organizing medical records provides immediate access to the required information. Medical records sorting, collation and pagination services provided by professional medical record review companies are of great support for medical-legal firms.
Check out these frequently asked questions and answers on medical record sorting and organization.
How important is medical records organization for legal cases?
Medical records provide the key evidence necessary for personal injury lawsuits, medical malpractice claims, workers’ compensation cases, and disability determinations. Finding crucial information from these medical records can be tedious and time-consuming for legal professionals and their staff. Medical records include lab test results, imaging studies, observation entries, prescriptions, treatment history, progress notes, operative reports, discharge reports and more. Organizing medical records is important for clinical trials, insurance claims processing, legal proceedings and other processes. Streamlined medical records are important in understanding or building up a case.
Comprehensive and advanced medical record indexing and sorting services help to process voluminous medical records accurately and efficiently.
What are the different types of medical record sorting?
Episodal and chronological sorting services are available.
In episodal sorting, medical reviewers look for incidents, information and keywords requested by attorneys. Data related to what the attorney is investigating will be reviewed, and it provides easy access to important content within the medical records.
In medical chronology sorting, all medical encounters will be sorted in the order of occurrence for a patient. Starting from the time of injury to the time of discharge, all medical encounters the patient experienced will be accurately summarized.
What does the medical record organization process involve?
Medical records can be organized by standard sorting methods, indexing, pagination and hyperlinking. Well-sorted medical records are crucial in developing a case. The organization process involves sorting or capturing key details in medical records such as page number, date, document type, providers and more, categorizing these records into sections and sub-sections, paginating, bookmarking and indexing documents, chronological document sorting, hyperlinking, organizing records and deleting duplicate multiple records.
Page numbers are included in the index and it helps for embedding hyperlinks. Hyperlinks for index and other individual pages in the chart make navigation easy.
How to choose the right partner to outsource medical record organization?
Retrieving, securing, and organizing medical records require experience and expertise. For value-added medical record organization services, make sure you partner with an experienced provider specialized in sorting, collating, indexing and pagination.
Check whether the company you partner with –
- understands the importance of organized medical records
- has years of experience in providing quality legal support services for cases involving medical records
- maintains the confidentiality and security of the information by strictly adhering to HIPAA compliance processes
Streamlining medical records related to your case and organizing them in an easy-to-access format helps to identify any missing records as well.
