• MODERN MEDICAL RECORDS RETRIEVAL SERVICE - AUTOMATION, COMPLIANCE, SAVINGS
The
modern Medical Records Retrieval (MRR) service is a combination of
modern web-based technology and a rules-compliant outsource solution.
Historically lawyers and their staff would have to set aside a portion
of their time, often a lot of time, to capture necessary information for
cases that involved medical records. It's not that the process is
complex. Quite the contrary, every attorney, paralegal, and
litigation-support person knows exactly what needs to be done.
It
may appear simple, but it is a very manually intensive process. Someone
at the firm must acknowledge the need for the records. Necessary forms
must be completed to ensure compliance with a myriad of laws (including
HIPAA), which the firm and often the patient (who may or may not be the
firm's client) would need to initiate a request. Then, the firm must
track the progress of the request, and eventually receive, review, and
organize the results, or note that there were no medical records
available related to the matter.
To support the business of
running a law practice, sophisticated and affordable software tools
include new client/business intake, workflow automation, and conflicts
management. Vendors who provide early case assessment tools and
e-discovery-based technology-assisted review have begun to offer
solutions for small firm and solo practitioners. In this article, we
will show you how you can improve productivity, lower costs, and better
manage billing for MRR expenses.
How Medical Records Retrieval Services Work
Here's
how a typical MRR service works for a small firm/solo practice. One of
the firm's employees logs into a secure, encrypted website. He or she
then submits an order outlining the patient's information, the records
being requested, and any other data necessary to complete the request.
What happens next is truly a game-changing activity. Instead of the
firm's billable resources chasing record requests from hospitals,
doctors, and other healthcare providers, they go back to doing other,
productive work, while the MRR process self-executes, and eventually
provides you with the requested information and documents or informs you
that there were no responsive documents.
Questions Regarding MRR Services
The
availability of MRR services presents all attorneys, but especially
solo and small firms, with the following important questions:
• How do you start with an MRR service?
• How are the record requests processed?
• Is this process HIPAA-compliant?
• When and how am I alerted to the status of my requests?
• How do I distribute the costs/fees associated with outsourcing medical records retrieval?
Choosing Your MRR Provider
To reduce the risk of choosing the wrong MRR service, consider the following best practices:
1) Ensure that the MRR service can prove secure access to its website (and your records) via a login and password.
2) Understand the MRR service's processes to ensure protection of privacy.
3) Understand its service level agreements, which explain their process and anticipated turnaround time.
4) Verify that the MRR service has experience with expediting record requests by requesting a list of reference clients.
5)
Review the process by which you and/or your staff are notified of
updates, including record availability or notice of "no record found."
6)
Ask for the MRR service's price schedule, preferably in a format that
will permit you to do an apples-to-apples comparison of the fees of
other MRR services.
When possible, a dedicated MRR service is a
better choice than a firm that offers a multitude of legal practice
services of which records retrieval is only a small subset of their
overall business.
Getting Started with the MRR Provider
Upon
choosing your MRR provider, the steps to starting to work with the
provider are straightforward and similar to those when signing up with
any on-line type of service:
• The firm identifies the approved personnel who are authorized to access the secure system.
• A unique user ID is created for the firm at this time, with a strong password required for all future access.
•
Often, this is also the time that billing information is provided, and
thus a financial account with the firm and MRR is created for future
invoicing.
• Each authorized person completes a new user profile
and sign-on request. The user must provide email and phone contact
information.
• It is the responsibility of the law firm to notify
the MRR as soon as possible in the event that an existing authorized
user should be removed from the access control. The MRR should remedy
and respond as soon as the user access has been removed.
• While
the use of the MRR site should be quite easy for most users with minimal
training, additional site support generally is available from the MRR's
services personnel via phone or email request.
Safeguarding Privacy
No
matter how beneficial the technology, the firm must ensure compliance
of federal and state HIPAA guidelines and any ethical rules about
maintaining client confidences. Therefore, they must ensure that the MRR
service collects, hosts, and provides access to client(s) records while
maintaining compliance with privacy guidelines. Note: This should be
part of your due diligence when selecting a provider.
The MRR
Service should comply with Federal and state privacy laws. MRR services
should keep up to date with changing rules of privacy such as the HITECH
Act.
MRR agreements should expressly state that no personally
identifiable health information (PHI) can ever be used for non-business
related activities such as marketing and/or sales lead generation.
Record Processing
Once you have chosen an MRR service and set up your account, obtaining medical records is relatively straight-forward:
•
After you enter a request into the system, the MRR service creates an
MRR record request connected to the unique ID of the requester (the
specific user at your firm), and confirms receipt of the request via an
email.
• A reviewer is assigned to assess the necessary actions to
fulfill the request, and will notify the user of any questions
regarding the record request. In some states, including California, an
electronic request can be executed from the MRR service to the
healthcare provider, eliminating the need for paper-based transaction.
•
The provider then tracks the request, and conducts any follow-up
communication by any means available, including email, telephone or
in-person visits if necessary, to acquire clear copies of records
requested.
• If the record is available and legible, it is scanned
into the secure web-based system for access by the user. Otherwise, a
"no record found" is annotated to the request, and communicated back to
the user.
Communication Is Key
Nothing can
be more frustrating to case management than waiting for needed
information from a third party. The MRR service must not only forward
the record request to the healthcare provider, but also must provide the
firm an ongoing and timely response regarding status. Each record must
be tracked in real-time with detailed notes from the MRR agents. The MRR
service should send alerts if additional information is required,
provide replies via email, and deliver the link to download and/or view
completed requests as soon as the records become available. Again,
during the selection process, you should ascertain the provider's
practices regarding communications, and include them in the contract.
Speed Is Critical Too
Obtaining
the medical records timely is critical, whether to respond to
discovery, to make or oppose a motion for summary judgment, to get an
expert up to speed, or to settle a case. A reliable MRR service will
offer a quick turnaround. They have the experience working with medical
locations to obtain records faster than a law firm's in-house staff.
After all, a law firm staff member may encounter (or, in truth, may feel
like they have gotten stuck with) the occasional medical record search,
but the MRR service is a specialist in the process of collecting
information, including "no records found." So, the MRR service's very
job is obtaining medical records, and therefore will have the process
down to a set of specific steps, and can support their clients via a web
interface.
Relationships With Healthcare Providers
Sometimes
hospitals, physicians' offices, and other healthcare providers may
treat the occasional request by an attorney for medical records as an
inconvenience, not respond as quickly or perhaps as completely as the
attorney or client would like. A smart MRR service will develop
long-term relationships with healthcare providers and their staff to get
the data needed promptly and efficiently. This will improve the quality
of the document production, reduce its cost, and speed the process up.
Database Strength
Medical
records often can be in a different location or city than the
healthcare provider. For example, billing records for hospitals are
usually in an offsite facility, sometimes in another state. With the
advent of electronic records, more healthcare providers are centralizing
their records offsite with the umbrella company of their medical
group/hospital. Without the information on how and where to request
records, in-house staff can waste valuable time sending requests to the
wrong locations or having to spend the time to find out where to send
the requests. A strong database on where and how to request records from
healthcare providers therefore is key to save time, ensure complete
result, and save money. MRR services have the incentive and the
resources to develop such a database. Law firms, especially solos and
small firms, do not.
In addition the importance on the database in
requesting medical records, it is equally important on the production
side. Virtually all medical records are produced in digital format.
Records are typically available in PDF or TIFF file format, making them
searchable by many document management systems - including on premise,
cloud-based, web-based or hybrid systems. They are usually made
available for download and/or viewing from virtually anywhere on any
device that supports a secure micro-browser. The MRR service maintains
the medical records for ongoing access by the user and any authorized
personnel.
MRR Costs and other Considerations
The
MRR service will charge you for their services. However, because the
firm's resources are freed up to work on activities that generate
revenue for the firm, the costs of using an MRR service will be offset
at least in part, and perhaps in full. In addition, depending on your
fee arrangement with your client, the invoices from the MRR service may
be directly billable back to the client or at least accounted for as a
recoverable cost. (Many MRR services charge no monthly fees for having
an account, and thus the firm only incur fees on a usage basis, which
can then be charged to the cases for which they are required.)
Summary
While
many firms may continue the "do-it-yourself" approach, solos and small
firms should consider using an MRR service. In addition to the higher
costs of installing and maintaining one's own record management system,
the soft costs and resource consumption make this a less favorable
alternative. A qualified, experienced MRR service offers a cost
effective, robust platform for processing, monitoring, and tracking
medical records requests. Record management and processing is
HIPAA-compliant, always available, and secure-which in-house processes
may not be, with the attendant risks. Use of an MRR service does not
require capital expense to leverage digitally filed and maintained
medical records. Firm resources can be repurposed from tracking record
requests to meaningful and fee-generating activities. Client
satisfaction may improve as matters are able to be processed more
efficiently, and firm business may increase. The results of using an MRR
service are measureable and immediate. It's literally a one-click
quantum leap from manual, resource-heavy processes to a modern, digital,
secure web based management for your practice.
With over 20 years of experience in the field of Medical Record
Retrieval for law firms and insurance claims professionals, Record
Retrieval Service (RRS), offers complete compliance with state and
federal guidelines including HIPAA and HITECH laws. Using advanced
encryption techniques, and data servers housed only in the United
States, RRS is recognized as a leader in the collection and secure
hosting of medical record data. New clients can enjoy a discount of 20%
of RRS fees on their first month's order(s) simply by creating a new
account at http://www.recordrs.com.
We commit to never sharing or selling your email, contact or other
information with anyone, and should you ever decide to opt-out of
receiving future emails and offers, your email will be quickly deleted
from our database. We guarantee this practice 100%.
