When you are a small or solo law practice, both you and your office staff are always busy working. While most of that work is vital to the practice, there are actions that can be done to increase productivity by implementing some simple changes to workflow and processes that are very often done internally unnecessarily.
Here are 6 easy ideas worth your time and consideration:
Automate The On Boarding Process
When you are considering taking on a case, especially on contingency fees, you want to know as much as possible about the complaint, the circumstances, the injuries and medical treatment received, and, when possible, the defendant. Often this takes the form of an in-person meeting, if not a simple phone call.
Instead, create a form on your website (with all the necessary controls to avoid non-compliance with HIPAA and Privilege rules) to have the client complete themself. A simple-to-understand and complete form that asks the basic questions referenced above, will determine if the litigant is actually worth pursuing. By giving you the clear authority to review the complaint, basic online search engines will let you know before spending time on what may turn out to be a frivolous or worthless endeavor. Conversely, a scannable agreement for services can be added to an online folder on your server or cloud database, containing all the details pre-filled by the client.
Requesting Medical Records
This can be a nightmare and unnecessary assignment for otherwise billable staff. Many attorneys do not adequately track the time spent completing the request, getting the signoffs from clients, assigning it to the office associate or paralegal, and submitting the proper documents the first time. For example, a request for records based on treatment to date may be declined by a healthcare provider as additional treatments are required and complete, and the authorization for release forms signed months earlier can be declined by the provider as outdated. Thus, a good decision is to have requests done as close to the completion of treatment by a healthcare provider as possible.
Tracking Medical Record Requests
A PI plaintiff may see several healthcare providers, each of who generate separate bills, and records of treatment performed. In some cases, clients reports visiting the wrong hospital, physician or pharmacy, and time is spent chasing a record that truly does not exists. Even when the right provider is identified, it can take a tremendous amount of aggregate time to request, track, exchange state required forms to release records, and collect the data. An outsourced medical record retrieval specialist, proven to do all the work above, can offer a lower cost than in-house resources, and provide it via an online-, encrypted, HIPAA approved website. Fees vary from one record retrieval company to another, but reliable choices exist, and avoid the maze of requesting, tracking, collecting and delivering the medical records necessary to litigate the matter.
Cloud-based practice management applications and data storage
It's a fact. Though many small and solo legal practices may resist, the fact is that eliminating on-premises servers and associated support is the best choice today. Cloud-based solutions reduce cost of maintenance and support, eliminates downtime due to neglected updates to software, and provides access to firm data and client information securely from any location, and popular portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. There are industry/practice specific IT service providers who make this transition from in-office also known as on-premises computer systems easy and cost effective. Even a firm with basic MS Office applications and Time and Billing software can benefit from this transition. It eliminates paper handling and management, and often permits the use of existing, familiar software. It reduces risks of accident loss of data, and quick recovery in the event of a natural or man-made disaster, by providing regular and redundant backups.
Medical Record Summary
Outsourced medical records summarization services helps you screen each case in the most efficient and least disruptive manner. This process works by utilizing organized, summarized and hyper-linked summaries, to evaluate the case much faster with improved accuracy. Whether it requires matching your format, or creating a new one, the best providers works to narrow the focus on the client not the process.
Outsourcing Medical Records Bonus
When you use an outsourced medical record retrieval service, you receive a "hard" invoice attributable to the matter. All costs of filing, recording, tracking, and delivering the records are documented and fees explained. This is a preferred method of charging clients for the time of associates and paralegal to follow up with a variety of healthcare providers. There is no need to present the client with an invoice which they may contest, over the time spent in "chasing down medical records".
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