Medical records in complex personal injury, abuse and/or clinical negligence cases are often voluminous and complex.  Before medical experts can be instructed the records need to be sorted into type/chronological order, indexed, paginated, scanned and reviewed to identify any crucial missing records. 

This is a time-consuming process which many law firms don’t have the capacity to complete in-house. This work can be easily outsourced to an external medico-legal provider, such as ourselves.

The benefits of outsourcing this work are high:

• Outsourcing these services frees up valuable time for your in-house staff to work on other matters.

• The outsourced services are recoverable on an agency basis which means that law firms can bill profit costs for the work undertaken by us on their behalf, rather than recover these fees as a disbursement. 

• The outsourced services are a recognised disbursement in the industry, qualifying for disbursement funding schemes and funded by ATE insurance.

• The work creates a fully indexed, uniquely paginated and navigational set of records which can be used by all parties to the action.

• Most providers, including us, offer digital scanning of the records which assists with paperless working and dramatically reduces photocopying and admin costs when providing records to the medical experts.

• Redaction of the records to remove client and third-party information, although time intensive process which is often necessary for disclosure, can be completed by us at the same time as collation.

• If a chronology is also required, this can be tailored to the client’s specific requirements and includes entries relevant to the issues of limitation, breach of duty, causation, contributory negligence and quantum as standard.   Specific specialised chronologies can also be prepared on request.

• Accompanying client memorandums highlight a summary/timeline of events, relevant points of note, identification of missing, privileged and potentially discrediting records along with suggested questions for the medical expert. The memorandums direct the lawyer to the relevant records which will require their specific review, ensuring the lawyer can use their time effectively when working on the case.

• Work can be completely promptly, typically within 2 to 3 weeks for collation  & chronology work, ensuring that the case can be progressed quickly.  If instructions are urgent a faster turn around time can be requested.

• The work is completed by experienced professionals to an extremely high standard which is subjected to intensive quality control.

• Records are sorted using a system which allows for unique bates numbering (so no number is repeated) and for easy insertion of updating records at a later stage, if required.