A medical case chronology is a great support when you prepare a case for trial. However, you must prepare the chronology so that you get the most out of it. A company providing medical review solutions can provide accurate medical chronologies for your legal team. A good chronology ensures complete discovery and can help you win your case. You can have a clear idea about disputed facts as well as those aspects that require sources that will be acceptable in court. Another advantage of a good chronology is the scope of communication it provides – everyone on the trial team gets to share facts related to the case.
Given the significance of the medical chronology, the legal team can benefit from some best practices such as the following.
- Start preparing the chronology as early as possible: It is best to start creating the chronology as soon as all the medical records are received and reviewed. The earlier you start preparing the chronology, the better it can be put to use. Ensure that the facts are listed accurately, and the chronology is complete without any missing dates and other details regarding providers.
- List all the important facts: Review each medical document and extract important facts from it. For each fact sourced from a particular document, enter the document name or starting Bates number in the chronology’s Source(s) column. You can also consider entering a page and line reference. With this practice, the facts contained in each document will be listed at the proper point in the overall case narrative.
- Use database software rather than word-processing software: This is because database software facilitates creation and maintenance of the chronology. This is useful also when you have a multi-user database and the trial team members need to access the same. The main advantage of database software is that it automatically sorts the various facts chronologically, provides the day of the week for each date the user enters, allows entering information using pick lists, thus saving input time and also helping to avoid misspellings associated with manual entry. It makes exploring the chronology easy.
- Include all facts, whether prospective or disputed: A good medical chronology is a valuable knowledge base of medical facts. So, include all important facts, even those for which a court-acceptable source is yet to be developed.
Attorneys may find it a challenge to handle cases where an injured victim has a long medical history and numerous medical records. Going through voluminous medical case records, reviewing them and preparing a timeline can be very challenging. A good medical case chronology provides a detailed timeline of events that provide details on specific allegations or highlight possible areas of liability. Lawyers can rely on medical review firms for unbiased, fact-based and insightful chronologies that are easy to understand. Service providers will even ensure customized chronologies to suit individual client needs. You can rest assured that an experienced medical record review company will follow the best practices to ensure flawless output.
