What does medical records review to develop chronologies involve? In this process, a patient’s medical records are meticulously examined to organize significant medical events, diagnoses, treatments and other important details in a chronological or sequential manner. This is primarily done to develop life care plans that show the future medical needs of the patient and associated costs. It is a painstaking process that requires minute attention to detail, and life care planners usually outsource medical record review for life care planning to an experienced medical review company.
MOS Medical Record Reviews is your ideal partner for medical chart review and medical chronology solutions.
Medical Chronology Components
Following are the key components of a chronology.
- An accurate medical case summary or overview of the case
- A precise timeline of medical events
- Review of the impairment to clearly understand the patient’s health condition and medical history
- Any additional documents with details of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, medication records, lab results and so on
Medical Records Review to Develop the Chronology
The medical chart or record review process can be broken down into the following steps.
- Medical record organization in a sequential manner, eliminating any duplicate records.
- Highlight the key medical facts/evidence.
- Provide treatment details such as date of treatment, procedure performed, progress, and outcomes.
- Identify all missing medical records and providers.
- Any additional records and special reports (if any) are added to the medical chronology.
The medical record review is the necessary first step that helps organize the records and identify the progression of the patient’s health condition, important turning points in their medical journey, and treatment changes if any. The review process involves carefully examining various aspects such as diagnoses, medications/treatments, lab results, imaging reports and physician notes and extracting the information required to build a chronology. The data analysis helps identify patterns, significant events, and factors that may have contributed to the patient’s condition.
Advantages of Outsourcing Medical Record Review
- Gain access to expertise and efficiency: Expert medical record review professionals provide accurate reviews, thus saving time for life care planners.
- Access to advanced technology: Advanced software and technologies help streamline the review process, and thereby makes it easier to mine relevant medical data and build the chronology.
- Reduced errors: Professional review services help minimize the risk of errors that may arise from the misinterpretation of medical records. This ensures that the life care plan is based on authentic information.
- More focus on core responsibilities: With the chronology preparation entrusted to reliable providers, life care planning attorneys can focus on their core responsibilities.
- Cost-effective option: There is a cost associated with outsourcing, but the time saved and increased accuracy will lead to better outcomes. Thus the investment is justified.
Medical record review for life care planning and the medical chronologies prepared are essential tools for life care planners, life care planning attorneys and those handling medical cases. These help clearly understand the medical and rehabilitation needs of the patient. The medical information made available helps decide whether the patient needs additional evaluation to identify all of his or her actual medical needs. All aspects of the case can be communicated among the care team members as well. The review also brings forth any ambiguity in the medical chart, and whether specialists’ opinion need to be obtained to determine medical interventions, therapies or evaluations that may be needed in the future.
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