It is almost always necessary for an experienced Tennessee injury attorney to obtain an injured person’s medical records before a personal injury claim for a car or truck accident can be fully evaluated, Also, the at-fault driver’s insurance company will also want to see the records before authorizing a settlement of the claim.
Many personal injury clients get frustrated at the delay in obtaining medical records. It can often take a month or more to obtain medical records from doctors, hospitals, and physical therapists, and even more time from certain health care providers. There is no good excuse for these delays – virtually every provider charges for this service and the delays are extremely frustrating, both for the lawyer and the lawyer’s client.
The delays are caused because the health care providers don’t have enough staff on hand to meet the demand for records, and put record requests by attorneys for clients at the bottom of the stack. In other words, these health care providers give a higher preference for record-copying to other health care providers and insurance companies than they do lawyers.
Many health care providers out-source record requests to for-profit copy centers.
At the Law Offices of John Day, P.C. we have recently hired a company that specializes in obtaining medical records and bills to help us get records for our clients. This company performs this service for health care providers and insurers and obtains all records in a digital format. This service allows us to obtain records quicker because the time for the record request and the records themselves to travel by mail is eliminated. The company also follows-up on record requests by mail and, because it frequently has multiple requests outstanding to the same provider, is more likely to have a good relationship with the provider and can improve the response time.
Our firm understands that the delay caused by obtaining medical records is very frustrating and we continue to work to find a way to keep those delays to a minimum.