Medical record reviews are an integral part of a law firm’s cases as it pertains to claims and extremely valuable in medical litigation. It is a paralegal’s responsibility to organize medical records relevant to personal injury, product liability, and medical malpractice. 

What is the role of a paralegal at a law firm?

As a legal assistant, a person who is the role of a paralegal performs various document-processing tasks for a law firm. Their duties are broad, ranging from consultancies and compliance activities to litigation data organization. While Paralegals cannot offer legal services independently in most jurisdictions, they can sometimes offer services like settlements, court filings, legal research, and other auxiliary services with additional information from a solicitor attached. Most often, working under the direct supervision of an attorney, paralegals assist with case management by:

• Identifying potential witnesses in the case
• Coordinating and scheduling depositions
• Assisting with the hiring process for focus groups and mock trials
• Preparing pre-trial memorandum and exhibition lists
• Coordinating witness testimony during the trial
• Organizing documents for trial exhibits

How do Paralegals use medical records?

Lawyers are not the only ones who require access to medical records in order to review them for client cases. Paralegals, who serve as an integral part of the legal system, also have a hand in the process as paralegals use medical records to track the course of patient care and ensure legibility, countersignatures, and record retention.

Oftentimes, medical records are typed out, handwritten, faxed multiple times, or provided in a PDF. Medical records take an extensive amount of time to review, organize, and summarize. By using an electronic medical record review, organizing, and summarizing system (Hey, that’s Wisedocs!), paralegals are able to expedite the medical record review  process and provide more accurate  summaries in claims case management.

In a claims case, the medical record could be housed and passed through  insurance companies, workers’ comp and other government organizations, independent medical evaluators, hospitals and doctors, and other law firms. To request the necessary documents for their part of the claim review, a paralegal must call the providers to determine the location of the files. Medical records must be requested along with a detailed form completed by the patient authorizing the information release. 

When a law firm takes on a new client, they generally have the individual sign authorization forms to ensure a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant medical record release. The paralegal is responsible for ensuring compliance with all documentation so that attorneys are prepared to  support their clients most effectively in their claims case.

How has Wisedocs streamlined medical record reviews for legal and law firms?

Wisedocs is an important part of processing complex medical documents for claims that legal and law firms interact with. Lawyers and paralegals who provide services to those with disabilities, employers of those impacted by workplace injury, insurance providers, workers’ compensation boards, government ministries, automobile cases, and so much more touch the medical record record review process and require support in organizing and summarizing medical records.

"Our documents specialists work in the Wisedocs platform several hours a day," says Dr. Damien Marion, the Manager of Assessment Services at CVE Inc. "Every day through the week, Monday to Friday, we put new cases on the platform. We must have submitted hundreds so far, with thousands of pages. If there are documents to review on a file, we use Wisedocs to help organize and create the med brief."

Similar to independent medical evaluators, paralegals can organize and review medical record information so that the involved law firm can access and search for the correct information for their cases as quickly and effectively as possible. Wisedocs automatically hyperlinks documents to provide a purposeful review of the file and easy search capabilities, saving considerable time.

If you are a paralegal or part of a  law firm involved in claims cases, get in touch with our team for a demo

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