That persnickety E. Coli is on the attack again.  This time those little bacterium are attacking Chipotle Mexican Grill and their customers in six states—so far. 43 people and counting have contracted E. Coli 026 and the CDC is still hunting for the source of contamination. The only solution: Either avoid Chipotle Mexican Grills in the affected states or all together until the CDC determines the source of contamination.

Overshadowed by the Chipotle Mexican Gill high profile E. Coli 026 outbreak is the ongoing outbreak of Salmonella Poona linked to imported cucumbers from Baja. Wonder if the proposed wall would stop them.

So far, Salmonilla Poona has killed four people and sickened 838 people in 38 states. Voluntary recalls were issued by the wholesalers and most of those cukes were removed from store shelves and restaurant kitchens.  Nonetheless, salmonella contaminated cucumbers may still be in circulation in grocery stores around the country since the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service did not order the wholesalers or retailers to recall the imported, contaminated Cukes.  The only solution to the outbreak: toss your cucumbers and replace them with cucumbers grown in the U.S.A.

Obviously, these aren’t the first E. Coli and salmonella outbreaks, nor are they the last.  At RECORD GRABBER, we monitor the CDC and other info sources for all consumer health issues, including global outbreaks, constantly.  We are devoted to and involved in rapidly collecting and processing medical records for patients affected by past E. Coli, salmonella outbreaks of contaminated food products and outbreaks of life threatening diseases and procedures.  Our rapid retrieval and vetting of medical records are critical for both patients and their representative law firms, ensuring complete understanding of the outbreak and subsequent illnesses and consequences, along with ensuring transparent and impartial access to the primary evidence: the medical records.

When your law firm finds itself representing a party in a food-bourne illness case, Count on Record Grabber to be your medical records partner. On low and high volume, and low and high profile cases, our experience and success is unmatched and our turnaround time for production of records is the best in the industry.

Have questions and/or want further information about record retrieval and RECORD GRABBER’s complete set of services, please contact us at info@recordgrabber.com.

 

Sources:

http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/poona-09-15/index.html

http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2015/O26-11-15/index.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/21/us-chipotle-mexican-ecoli-idUSKCN0T92PV20151121

A Juggernaut of a Headache

What’s not to love about modern medical record retrieval? All those forms to fill out. All those hospital gatekeepers to cajole just to get to the administrators who hold those medical records hostage.

Then of course, there’s starting the process and your client supplying you with inaccurate or incomplete information and documentation on their authorization just to add to the mix, sending you to that bottle in the bottom drawer of your desk or to the Advil if the bottle is empty.

We all know the healthcare industry is an immense juggernaut powered by providers and patients. Medical records and associated documents log the juggernaut’s immense powertrain. Without accurate patient data on treatments and personal wellness, chaos ensues even though this immense powertrain plows on.

Moreover, accurate data are not guaranteed with all the additional work required to handle HIPPA compliant private health information. A single keystroke or dyslexia at any point in the process can stymie a request for medical records and send you back to square one. The legal process is long enough to begin without the added hassles of going through the chain of health professionals, repeatedly. What client wants to hear all those reasons and legitimate excuses delaying the resolution of their case? And, what about your practice? Word of mouth referrals are an important factor to a successful practice and those legitimate delays could be perceived as incompetence or milking the client on your part. If the client is angered over delays, it’s safe to assume in our social media driven age, your practice will suffer.

The Best Option

So to free your practice from this quicksand of medical record retrieval, why not seek assistance from a third party business associate or better yet, partner with one. Third party associates perform a variety of functions while gathering medical records.

• – Follow up with providers

• – Pay invoices

• – Review all documents

• – Organize all documents

• – Digitze all documents

• – Store all documents

A third party partner has established relationships with health professionals and because they are not a legal practice that the health provider’s staff may view as an adversary, gathering those records goes smoother.

And then there’s the technology and changes in the health industry or changes in procedures by individual healthcare providers. Not every practice is in the position to purchase or subscribe to the latest technologies that are ancillary to the practice’s core requirements. Nor are they able to keep up on the current state of the healthcare industry. Even for those practices that can afford these technologies, they are not cost effective and negatively impact a practice’s ROI as would a dedicated staff to follow the industry. Whereas that third party associate or partner, whose sole purpose is to request and gather documents and medical records, at the very least will have the latest technology or have their own proprietary technology and would be current on any changes no matter how insignificant.

Outsourcing and/or partnering with a third party that’s as dedicated to their practice as you are to yours will eliminate most if not all those delays and legitimate excuses associated with document gathering. With that extra time saved, you’ll be able to increase your client base or get in a few more rounds of golf. What could be finer than receiving glowing reviews by word of mouth and on social media about your speedy, excellent, reasonably priced service from your former and current clients?

 

Never Leave Home Without It

Most of us who run prefer running or jogging distance at our convenience instead of sprinting to the nearest shelter when taken by surprise by a sudden deluge. Yes, some folks may carry an umbrella so they don’t need to dash for shelter, though carrying an umbrella is a nuisance at best unless you’re from the school of thought that states one is never fully dressed without an umbrella.

Who hasn’t been caught in a deluge (they even have the occasional deluge in southern California)? Whether it’s a deluge of rain or work, most of us are usually unprepared unless we’ve been warned in advance.

Running the distance

When running the distance, there is plenty of time to prepare your case, to round up the all the documentation, the witnesses, the depositions, write, rewrite and rewrite some more to make sure your complaint or petition is letter perfect. Then there are those times when you’ve got to act fast. Even with a large staff at your disposal, you’ve got to be prepped, now! Or, in the final review before you present your case you find some documents are missing and/or there’s new information that has to be gathered and verified. If you don’t have a large staff or you are doing it by yourself, then it is almost impossible to take on the client or gather, verify and incorporate the new information into your complaint.

Sprinting

There’s no need to go into the eleventh hour only to discover some files and records whether digital or physical are misplaced. Or, that last minute eureka moment in court (I’ve watched too many Perry Mason episodes) and you need to get hold of that file or record now. We all know that presenting a case is about details and integrating the details into a cohesive and persuasive argument that’s airtight. Much like the daily 5 mile jog at a steady pace. Prepping a case is certainly no 100 meter dash.

But! If you do find you’ve gotta dash, make sure you’ve got your umbrella handy so you don’t get soaked.

Avoid Getting a Soaking

How to prevent a soaking when dashing to prepare a case for yesterday and you’re not a character in a scripted TV series? Outsourcing. Well, not entirely, not sure if you can outsource your accumulated knowledge, analytical skills and your mind, though no doubt soon there’ll be an app for that. Outsourcing is the umbrella that completes your outfit and without which you will get a soaking.

As I’ve mentioned before and will mention again, hopefully not ad nauseum, one of the most harrowing and time-consuming parts of the prep is corralling all those support records. This is where outsourcing is indispensable. Using a company that specializes in getting, validating, delivering and storing records, leaves you free to concentrate on organizing and preparing your case, even when it is due yesterday. The costs of using an outside company to secure and store you documentation are minimal when you compare them to the amount of time you yourself or your staff waste when you do it in house. While there are plenty of companies that will chase down the records and documents you need, not all are cloud-based, an important consideration when you’ve mislaid an important medical record (it happens), discover it’s missing when you’re in court, learn the record has been updated and you need it instantly. Only with cloud-based companies, can you download the record there and then instead of sending an email and waiting for the reply with the attached record or waiting for the company to send it with a messenger.

The Bespoke Umbrella

Too busy dashing through deluges to find the company that is ideal for you? No worries, if you’re reading our blog or happened upon it, then take some time to look us over or contact us and we’ll explain how only the best dressed, never leave home without their umbrella.

 

Security Stuff

What could be more important than security? Well, okay, lots of stuff. And, when you think about it, all that other stuff like anonymity, privacy, the kids, income, your FICO score, and your favorite cocktail done correctly each and every time—and like a cocktail, the amount of ingredients could be sizable—are all about comfort and peace of mind AKA security.

Fortresses, Moats and Minefields

As cyber threats increase, so must data security. Organizational plans to foresee and prevent attacks are of critical importance and need to be fluid for rapid response.  Data security must be assessed in all levels of the organization. Whether you know it or not, a third of all hack attacks result from employees’ (management included) curiosity by downloading and opening pernicious information. Curiosity kills cats and hijacks data but to squash employee curiosity is to kill an organization by negating its greatest asset, innovation. So, organizations live in fortresses with rather permeable walls. Their data is ‘guarded’ ceaselessly in the organizations deepest holds and no matter how many precautions taken, how many attacks they repel, eventually the villains will be victorious, followed by press releases and apologies by the vanquished victims. If only… No matter how stringent HIPPA requirements are, all those medical records vaulted on your super secure servers are as equally vulnerable to hackers as the corporate handbook.

Maybe what’s needed is a new way to think about security. Instead of thinking fortress, think terrorist. Instead of buttressing firewalls and maintaining moats and minefields to protect your fortress and the data within, think guerrilla, think cells. In other words, why must we keep all data together in the deepest hold in a single fortress that’s besieged?

 

Celling Data Security

To thwart hackers, why not break up data into separate pieces and move the separate pieces of data into external cells—external secure cloud servers–linked only to the organization and accessible for any authorized user. Think about it. Hackers breaking into the US government personnel office and stealing personal information of approximately 4 million federal workers. Yikees!

I’d bet all those gov’t black ops folks would feel safer if the government stored their SSNs on one cloud server, their names on another and their addresses and other sensitive information on still other external servers. Then when the personnel office was hacked, the hackers might have only gotten away with a list of SSNs or names or other individual pieces of info instead of the whole shebang. Celling data on secure cloud servers could have prevented the massive data heist by either alerting fortress’ defenders to the hack in progress and/or for the hackers to break into each cell to extract the data that the assault becomes too complicated and too time consuming.

Surely, your organization is on the ball and has instituted the latest, greatest security protocols so how does the government theft relate to your organization’s data security and in particular to your clients or patients medical records, you bemuse? Simple. By storing all medical records on an external secure cloud, even if your company is hacked by the CEO’s teen, DHS or a gov’t black operative, your clients or patients private information remain safe, secure and readily accessible.

Privacy and identity security are one of Record Grabber’s core tenants. Foil the villains by enlisting recordgrabber.com and maybe you’ll hear them villains shouting. “Curses, foiled again.”

 

Too Few Hours?

Jeb Bush stated back in July that we are working too few hours. Don’t we wish! Jeb got the too few hours correct, except he qualified it with “we.” Well let’s revise that qualifier to ‘in the day.’

Too Many Hours?

Forget your caseload for a second. Forget your torts and briefs for a second. Forget your calendar, your depositions for a second. Forget your hunt for new clients for a second. Forget your billable hours for a second. These are your primary tasks and alone, they consume most of your working hours whether you have a large staff or you are a staff of one. Instead, take that second or if you need more time, take a minute to think about all the time you and your firm spend supporting your main tasks. If you ask me, I’d say retrieving medical records is the single most time consuming aspect and biggest headache in my day. Sure, there are other parts of my day that send me to Tylenol, but requesting, managing and retrieving medical records is the productivity killer of all productivity killers. Hour after hour are gobbled up filling out forms, sending initial requests, following up and verifying the records are correct. What about getting those records and documents you have archived, wasting time hunting for those records that may be in storage? These are wasted hours that could be spent productively on your primary work.

According to a survey by International Data Corporation (IDC), wasted time costs an organization approximately $20,000 per worker per year and amounts to a loss of 21% to your company’s productivity. For a company with a 1,000 people, addressing productivity time wasters would be equivalent to hiring 213 new employees.¹

Grab and Go

Having the tools to retrieve records and documents rapidly and securely should be as simple and accessible as grabbing a cup of coffee from any convenience store. Record Grabber is just that. It’s the grab and go convenience store for all your records. Well, sort of. Record Grabber is in the cloud and it’s singular location is accessible from anywhere on the planet. It is the seamless combination of technology and information to eliminate the headaches of requesting, storing and retrieving records and documents so you’re not reaching for the Tylenol. And it eliminates all that wasted time so if you want, you can prove Jeb right. Plus, Record Grabber has the added benefit of boosting your company’s ROI.

The Whole Shebang

Record Grabber games the system. We’ve got HIPPA down pat and know our way around the health Industry like the back of our hands to provide you with those critical medical records you need yesterday. And, once we have them, we store them for you in our secure, vault-like cloud so your client’s privacy remains private. When you need them in the future, you don’t need to waste your time digging them out of your digital archives or file cabinets. Just go to Record Grabber, logon and in a flash you’ve got the records right there on your desk. Talk about putting a huge dent in all that wasted time and person-hours.

What better way to trump your record management!

¹ Melissa Walker, Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap: New challenges and Opportunities for IT. ©2012 IDC

Case Intake and Lead Conversion Software    

The Legal Tech Industry is an ever evolving landscape with new products, services and features that utilize technology to provide efficiency and cost saving measures to law firms. As a Record Retrieval service, Record Grabber fits in to the law firm’s process of obtaining medical records/bills for cases involving mass torts, personal injury, malpractice, nursing home neglect, etc. Every company has their niche, their service that they want to establish and integrate in to the part of each law firm’s daily operations. Captorra provides Case Intake and Lead Conversion Software to help their firms more quickly collect, qualify and sign up new clients all while providing the marketing intelligence to help them better direct their marketing dollars.

Captorra is the legal industry’s leading case intake application. It was initially designed in collaboration with multiple practices, including traditional personal injury and mass torts practices, but client demand expanded their offering into family law, bankruptcy and other consumer law practices. Basically, if your practice markets its legal services to individuals, Captorra could be just what you need.

Their clients are a great mix of heavy advertising, high volume personal injury practices as well as very selective boutique practices using Captorra to ensure they sign up the right cases for their practice. In addition to our great technology, our clients reply upon Captorra for our industry expertise and outstanding client service.

If you would like to learn more about Captorra click here. You can also contact them directly at 855-GO-INTAKE or sales@captorra.com

Submitting requests for records and bills for your clients’ cases can be a burdensome and time consuming task. There are a multitude of reasons why your requests can be delayed, take extra phone calls and extend your request turn-around time from weeks to months. The major issues that we see that can hold up a request are issues with the initial authorization form and the accompanying paper work. Let’s run through the top five issues that we see on a day to day basis that can hold up your record requests:

 

1.) The Authorization Form is not HIPAA compliant. We see this from time to time where the authorization form is not HIPAA compliant and the provider denies the from, which requires you to restart the entire process and quite possibly take more time to have your client resign another form. Here is a link to our authorization form that we use and rarely run in to issues with a provider. HIPAA form. The Department of Health and Human Services provides an FAQ section to help provide information to ensure your Authorization Forms are HIPAA compliant.

2.) Another issue we run in to is the use of electronic signatures. Some providers will accept digitally signed authorization forms. On the other hand, there are others that will only accept a manually signed authorization form. The HHS provides guidelines for the accepted use of electronic signatures.  DocuSign, who is the most prominent electronic signature provider, supplies a guideline on the use of electronic signatures. Despite all the information and guidelines for the use of electronic signatures there are many providers that will only accept manually signed authorization forms. Which they have every right to, if a provider suspects that a signature does not match the signature they have on file for the patient they can deny the authorization form. Their argument is that they cannot cross reference the manually signed authorization form with the electronic one, so how do they know it is signed by the patient?

3.) Another denial reason we see is that the last name of the patient has changed since they were seen by the provider. This can cause confusion and more work in contacting the client to find out their last name for when they saw this provider, then getting another authorization form signed. People get married, or remarried throughout their lives and their last names change. This is normal, especially if you are getting records from three or four years ago. Easy way to mitigate this is to ask from the beginning.

4.) The authorization form is expired. We see forms that have an expired signature date that makes the form invalid. On every authorization form you must provide an expiration date or time frame for when the authorization will expire. Cases can go on for months or years sometimes, make sure to check the expiration date of the authorization with the date of signature. This simple task could save you time and heartache in receiving a denial for a simple mistake.

5.) Another issue with denials is when accompanying paperwork is not provided. For instance, if someone passed away a death certificate must be provided. If another individual is signing for the patient you need to provide a power of attorney or executrix of the estate in order to prove the validity for the person signing for the records. Make sure to check your signatures and have all documentation sent with the request.

 

A litany of issues can arise from requesting records from providers. These are the most common reasons for denial of your client’s authorization form. Check your paperwork before sending the documentation in order to save yourself wasted time and money in having to redo the documents and start the entire retrieval process over again.

 

Numerous times attorneys, paralegals, and office managers tell us, “We handle our records in house,” not even giving a second thought to the actual financial cost that comes with this. The typical response is not to stop and think, How much is handling our record retrieval in house costing us?

First, time is the biggest resource that is being wasted. As an attorney you can charge $200, $300, $500 or even $1,000 an hour for your services. Your time that is scheduled with clients and spent working on their cases is money for you. Why are you spending time calling a hospital to sit on hold for ten minutes, just to find out that you have to resend your original request because you sent it to the wrong place the first time? At this point you assign the record retrieval tasks to your paralegals or office managers. Let’s breakdown this scenario of retrieving records and billing statements:

Processing Paperwork for Request: 15 minutes

Faxing or Mailing Paperwork: 20 minutes

Following up with the Provider: 45 minutes

Paying & Tracking the Invoice: 15 minutes

Reviewing the Records: 30 minutes

Total: 1hr 55 minutes. Cost at $14 hourly rate + $4 for taxes, equipment, operating, insurance/benefits

Total Cost: $34.50

This is a best case scenario of how the entire process plays out and the actual time you will spend on getting records from a provider. Mind you, this is the best case scenario. What happens if the request is lost by the provider? Documents are incorrect? The provider takes 10 phone calls before they will send the records? Let’s take a look at a more likely worst case scenario:

Processing Paperwork for Request: 15 minutes

Faxing or Mailing Paperwork: 20 minutes

Initial Follow Up with the Provider: 15 minutes

Resending Paperwork: 10 minutes

Following up with the Provider: 10 minutes x 6 calls= 60 minutes

Paying & Tracking the Invoice: 15 minutes

Reviewing the Records: 30 minutes

Incorrect Documents Sent/No Certified Page or Affidavit: 60 minutes

Total: 3 hrs 45 minutes Cost at $14 hourly rate + $4 for taxes, equipment, operating costs, insurance/benefits

Total Cost: $67.50

At $34.50 best case, and $67.50 worst case scenario, these are your ranges for your record retrieval costs. Not only are your labor costs incredibly high, your turn around time for getting records to get the cases closed increases. What would closing all of your cases out 3 or 4 weeks earlier for your firm do? Not only will your clients be happy that their case is closed faster, you also get paid faster and receive the money back that you likely fronted for their case. Happy clients, Save time, Quicker cash flow, more cases for your firm: all of these are benefits of outsourcing your record retrieval…why is your firm still handling your record retrieval in house?

 

 

 

 

The Legal Tech industry has been shaking up the way law firms operate on a day to day basis. One of the key changes has been the ever increasing usage of Cloud Storage and electronic documents within, and outside the law firm. The days of storing documents in a filing cabinet are slowly ebbing away. Even keeping the documents on an external hard drive or on your computer decreases your firm’s efficiency and puts your firm at risk. Let’s take a look at some of the risks and benefits of how you store your firms’ documents.

Paper Format:

Believe it or not, we still come across law firms that store and use all of their files in paper format. Rows and rows of filing cabinets stuffed full of documents along with boxes piling up in offices slowly overtaking all your available office space. Sure, we all understand that some documents need to be in paper format. We still receive medical records in paper format, they are easier to review, sort and organize in a paper format. We get it, however we do not store the documents in a paper format. This is the tried and true way that law firms operated on for many years. Does this system work? The short answer is yes, but is it worth the risk of misplacing documents or possibly losing everything to a fire or water damage?

Hard Drive/Laptop:

Storing all of your firms’ documents on a hard drive or work computers can be an effective way to operate. All your documents are easily accessible on your computer and can be secured through encryption. Documents can be shared on the network with all employees that need access to the documents. It is a relatively easy way to operate, however you still run the risk of lost or damaged laptops where you could potentially lose all of your documents. What happens if you see the dreaded blue screen on your laptop and cannot retrieve all of your files? Think about starting over with all of your cases, you need releases, contracts, case pertinent documents, medical records…the list goes on and on. This could be a daunting loss to your firm and would set you back operationally and financially.

Cloud Storage:

The advent of Cloud Storage is just another step up from using hard drives/laptops. This is another tool for your firm to utilize to mitigate risk and operate more efficiently. Yes, you should still have your laptops encrypted if you have any sensitive information or PHI to follow guidelines for HIPAA. What Cloud Storage does is allow documents to be organized and stored securely at a minimal risk to your firm. Documents can be shared with anyone, from any location. How much easier would it be if you were out of the office for court and you need a document immediately? Simply log in to your cloud storage system and search for your document. This is much easier and efficient then having to worry about if the document is on your laptop, or a paralegal’s laptop that you cannot easily access. From a security and ease of use standpoint utilizing a cloud storage system is the way to save your firm time, money and increase your efficiency.

Cloud Storage Options:

Your first option could be to use a Cloud Storage vendor to store, organize and secure your work files. The main options are Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, SkyDrive etc. Many of these options provide a cheap and reliable cloud storage platform for your firm to use. On the other hand, many case management software companies provide cloud storage as part of their service. You can easily store all of your case pertinent documents in the case management software to track everything that is needed in one platform.

What is encryption?

Encryption is the process of encoding information in a manner that only authorized persons may access and read the information. Encryption does not prevent interception of the message, however it prevents an unintended person from receiving the information and being able to access the information.

Why is encryption important?

Has the question come up, “Do we have to use encryption in our business if we use PHI?” The short answer is No. However, encryption is an essential feature that all covered entities and business associates should follow for best business practices. According to the HITECH Breach Notification Rule, “covered entities and business associates must only provide the required notifications if the breach involved unsecured protected health information.” You can protect your business by using encryption to mitigate the risks associated in dealing with PHI.

Take a look at some of the highest costs associated with HIPAA breaches. The first breach was simply using an unencrypted USB drive that was stolen from an employee’s car. This simple overlook ended up costing the Alaska HHS Department $1.7 million dollars. Could your business sustain itself with a $1.7 million dollar fine?

Encryption in Record Retrieval

Dealing with PHI comes with many risks that require necessary steps to mitigate the risks to avoid data breaches and the fines, personal grief, and business risks associated with these breaches. Simple measures can be taken to encrypt PHI to lower these risks:

Email – There are multiple companies that you can use that will encrypt your emails. Record Grabber uses a company called Zixcorp to encrypt emails that may contain PHI. It is a cost efficient and effective manner to ensure your emails are not intercepted and read by impermissible parties.

Computers – A cost effective and easy way to encrypt a Microsoft computer is by using Bitlocker. Bitlocker can be used by upgrading to Windows Pro and installing the added Bitlocker feature. The install time takes about an hour and costs $99.

USB/Media Devices – With Bitlocker you can encrypt USB/Media Devices to secure PHI information.

Phones – A simple 4 digit number code on phones will not suffice. There are black box devices that will use brute force to crack number codes by going through every number sequence until the sequence is found. Here is a short tutorial on how to set your passcode and details about iPhone encryption.

These are all simple to use and cost effective means to mitigate your risks with PHI by using encryption. Is a few hundred dollars and a couple hours of work worth thousands of dollars in possible fines by not using encryption?

Using a record retrieval service like Record Grabber ensures that all your clients’ PHI is encrypted and secure. Not only do we help your business by handling your record retrieval, we help keep you in business by protecting your clients’ PHI.