The dynamic between advances in technology and the current economic and employment situation
have made the collection of medical records more complicated and less efficient in the short run. While
new laws and methods of obtaining records will ultimately be much faster, the current situation is that
most providers do not have established and efficient means of providing medical records.
Underemployment in the areas of services such as medical record copying and provision have had an
adverse effect on getting records in a timely manner. At Wiener & Lambka, we are constantly looking
for ways to obtain records efficiently and at a fair cost for our clients. Below is our new notice to clients
so that they can better understand how this process will work.
MEDICAL RECORD COLLECTION
In every personal injury case, we will collect our client’s medical records, as they constitute the evidence
that we use to present your claim.
Since the pandemic started and continuing forward to the present day, obtaining medical records has
become more and more difficult for various economic reasons, the most important being the inability of
medical providers to hire and retain employees at the level of medical record retrieval. Additionally,
laws have been passed that were designed to allow more access to one’s own medical records as a
patient, but because the laws are new, they are not applied or interpreted consistently by the medical
community. Also, different laws cover different types and sizes of medical providers and their
obligations in providing records for their client.
In our continuing efforts to efficiently and quickly move our clients’ claims forward, while also trying to
balance the expenses of a case in a manner that is favorable to our clients’ bottom line, we will use
several different methods of record collection. We may utilize a record retrieval business to help in this
regard, we may seek to obtain the records ourselves directly from the provider, or we may use a
combination of these things. Last, we may ask for our clients to have a role in this process when it will
result in both speed and cost savings.
One of the new ways to obtain records is for our clients to utilize the Federal Cures Act. This law
requires some providers to produce for their patients a “designated records set” through an electronic
portal. MyChart is a popular example of such a portal. The patient will request from their provider a
specific set of records to be made available on line. The patient has a user name and password to the
portal. Once the records have been put into the portal, our client can send the records to us electronically, print the records and provide them to us manually, or let us have access to their portal to
obtain the records directly.
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