Author: rgAdmin

Quite often 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?” We’re here to tell you, outsourcing record retrieval really pays off!

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 best-case scenario of retrieving records and billing statements:

 

In House Record Retrieval

Processing Paperwork for Request	15 minutes
Faxing or Mailing Paperwork	20 minutes
Follow Up with the Provider (3 follow-ups at 10 minutes per follow up)	30 minutes
Paying & Tracking the Invoice	15 minutes
Reviewing & Scanning Records	30 minutes
Total	1 hour 50 minutes
Legal Assistant US Avg: $15.30/hour	$28.05
Taxes, Equipment, Operating, Insurance, Benefits: 30%	$8.42
Total	$36.47

 

This is a best-case scenario of how the entire process plays out and the actual time your staff spends on getting records from the 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 additional tasks and issues that arise that can take up hours of time:

 

Tasks Requiring Additional Time

Re-submitting a Request	10 minutes	$2.55
Resending Paperwork	10 minutes	$2.55
Each Additional Follow Up	10 minutes	$2.55
Receive Wrong Records Reach Back Out to Get Corrected	30 minutes	$7.65
Affidavit (filling out, quality checking, etc)	30 minutes	$7.65
Setting Up Courier Service	30 minutes	$7.65
Coordinating Courier Service (average 3 visits to provider)	60 minutes	$15.30

 

If you have to re-submit the request, have 6 extra follow up calls, and have to reach back out to get an affidavit corrected you’ve just added $26 of expenses. By using Record Grabber, all tasks having to do with managing the retrieval process fall on us. The only tasks needed to be done by the firm are submitting the request and providing us with any necessary documents. Easy as that!

 

Outsourcing Record Retrieval

Submit Request to Record Grabber	1 minute
Download Records from Portal	1 minute
Total	2 minutes
Legal Assistant US Avg: $15.30	$1.00
Taxes, Equipment, Operating, Insurance, Benefits: 30%	$0.30
Record Grabber Fee	$35.00
Total	$36.30

 

At $36.47 best case retrieving records on your own versus $36.30 if outsourcing through Record Grabber, why waste the time? Not only are your labor costs incredibly high, your turnaround time for getting records to closing your cases increase. 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, but you also get paid faster and receive the money back that you likely fronted for their case.

Have happy clients, save time, get paid faster, handle more cases: all of these are benefits of outsourcing your record retrieval. Why is your firm still handling your record retrieval in house?

What are you waiting for!? Get started saving time and money with Record Grabber today.

 

Source: https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Legal-Assistant-Salaries

Medical record storage and retrieval are not the most exciting of subjects. However, it is a necessity. To an outsider, any single provider may be just like any other. But that minimizes the value of a provider’s unique services to their clients. Here at Record Grabber, we are focused strongly on providing a good service that customers can rely on time and time again.

 

The Personal Service

We understand that professional healthcare organizations require an element of the personal. When things go wrong, or when you encounter a difficult issue, you need to know that you can rely on your provider not just to treat you as another cog in the machine. You need a service that will treat your case, your issue, your unique difficulties with the individual concern that it deserves for quick resolution. The more attentive your provider, a faster resolution is more likely.

 

Unusual Record Types

Some services offer access to and storage of medical records in line with HIPAA. The problem is that this is all they offer. Thankfully, we understand that clients just like you often need diverse and unusual records, the types of information that do not always come as standard. For a complete knowledge base and a proper resolution, you’ll need access to more than medical records for an impending court case: cellphone records, police reports, employment history and insurance details.

 

Chronologies & Summaries

Sometimes, all you need is a quick list of the key points such as those contained in a chronology (a timeline of important events) or a summary (a brief report – no more than a few pages, listing the most pertinent details). You do not have the time or the inclination sort through hundreds of documents. Rest assured that any time you need a Medical Summary or a Medical Chronology, Record Grabber can provide one.

 

Eternal Storage

Your records remain in our database forever. That saves time and effort in searching for records, and peace of mind they’ll be there when you need them. We destroy physical records when they are no longer needed, and based on HIPAA guidelines. Sometimes, a case can resurrect years after a resolution. Our solution takes care of this, so you need not worry about whether a record has run its course.

 

Try us out! Get started with Record Grabber today.

Business is complex and few industries are as complex as legal. In order to remain competitive, it’s important to work out your cost of service carefully and bill accordingly. You may have considered whether the cost of record storage and retrieval outsourcing is a passable expense. The short answer is that yes, it is. But let Record Grabber elaborate further.

 

What is a Passable Expense?

Legal business services always have flexible costs associated with them. You are entitled to bill your client for some services. There are two types of cost that you may bill:

• Hard Costs: the costs of your expertise, knowledge and skills that form part of a standard costing
• Soft Costs: the associated costs of employees’ other work such as research and data capture

These soft costs have a name – “passable expense”. Your practice may not be aware that outsourcing is a passable expense. By using Record Grabber’s services for record retrieval and storage, the costs you incur as part of our service may be billed along with your other services, to your client(s).

 

What is Not a Passable Expense?

A passable expense is one that a service provider may include when billing a client; it is applicable against individual and specific cases. The costs associated with storing and maintaining electronic records stored on your server or network, however, are not passable. These are typical office expenses considered part of your day-to-day business operations. Any costs should be claimed against your revenue to calculate your taxable profit. Outsourcing is a passable cost, but in-house record retrieval is not.

 

The Dilemma of How and When to Pass an Expense

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct from the ABA states how professionals ought to record and recover their passable expenses such as record access. Specifically, this centers on full disclosure of when and how a new cost is being recorded and billed. If this is confusing, then perhaps Record Grabber’s outsourced record retrieval and storage service is the ideal solution for your medical legal practice. Passing on the cost is easy. We break our billing down in simple and practical terms. You can bill your client for these costs because it’s a hard cost rather than a soft cost. You’ll never need to calculate percentages because all costs are associated with a specific case.

 

Are you ready to try out Record Grabber? Get started here!

In this complex legal world, we know the importance of retrieving records quickly. You are part of a wide network of professionals each requiring information. Sometimes that information is urgent due to pending court cases. Perhaps one of the reasons you’ve not yet outsourced your record retrieval and storage is concern over speed or efficiency. These are misconceptions that Record Grabber hopes to challenge here. Let us assure you that of Record Grabber’s professionalism, diligence, and commitment to a smooth and efficient process.

80% Records Retrieved in Under 30 Days

That’s right. Typically, you can expect an average turnaround of about 30 days. It must be noted however that we receive around 80% of records in less time than that. We always aim to hit this target, earlier if possible and where possible. If a turnaround works out longer than this, it’s usually down to elements beyond our control. We may require further information from you, or the information we have provided is incomplete. Also, we may be waiting for authorization in line with our legal requirements. Nevertheless, we strive to improve turnaround times.

3 Weeks Isn’t Unusual

There are always outliers that are way beyond the expected 30 days. But these outliers are rare. When we eliminate these outliers – those where we need additional information supplied or from uncooperative providers, we’re confident we can deliver faster. Many of our clients enjoy a fast turnaround of 21 days, sometimes less. In the legal world, it’s vital that we get it right. 3 weeks is considered a quick response due to legal technicalities and case complexities. Unfortunately, uncooperative providers are a fact of life in this industry and these take longer to process.

Record Grabber’s Commitment to Diligence

We could be tempted to simply close out difficult requests to improve our turnaround time. After all, it would make Record Grabber look good to simply focus on being faster than everybody else. Record Grabber has a commitment to diligence and upholding a reputation as a thorough provider of record retrieval and storage. We retrieve 99.99% of requested records.

 

Record Grabber gets you the records you need when you need them. There are always requests that take longer than hoped for to retrieve but 80% of records are retrieved in the first 30 days. Make your free Record Grabber account today!

Technology is one of the fastest growing areas of the legal industry thanks to Cloud storage, always-on internet, and other technologies. Legal is not the first industry that comes to mind when considering the most prominent businesses on the web. Yet the following organizations are well-known in the legal tech world.

 

Relativity

Relativity produces technology that aids the legal process using new developments in artificial intelligence. The company’s services enable far easier support to litigation and legal investigations in many industries. In the last year, they received a lot of investment to expand services into storage and indexing of legal documentation and reviewing contracts. What’s more, the technology is open source platform which means developers can build on the code to adapt to their unique needs.

 

DocuSign

One of the top businesses to receive investment in 2018, it’s hard not to see why. The legal industry sometimes needs to work across borders when handling cases and that means signing off documents. But what happens when a client or a litigant is on the other side of the world? Mail isn’t fast enough, but there is nothing faster than esignatures. DocuSign is a legally recognized digital signature service used all over the world.

 

Everlaw

Founded in 2011, Everlaw filled a gap in the digital market for managing and organizing litigation. It’s now the most popular management platforms for law firms. Main customers include District Attorneys in the area of ediscovery and a wide variety of health legal professionals. It has grown year on year through its accessibility, ease of use, and providing access to an electronic world that was arguably slow to take up web services.

 

Apttus

Apttus has almost single-handedly revolutionized how we execute legal processes since it’s foundation in 2006. Their success is so great that it’s recently become part of the Salesforce family. This means the platform is scalable with solutions in the Salesforce Community arising quickly from any issues. Removing the requirement for having lawyers at every stage, it’s a quote-to-cash solution that speeds up legal cases.

 

Atrium

The brainchild of the Justin Kan, one of the founders of Twitch and Y Combinator, and Augie Rakow, a law firm partner in Silicon Valley. The pair founded the company in 2017 with the aim of becoming the country’s largest multi-practice firm. Presently in a tech development stage to speed up the legal process, it has many well-known investors. It hasn’t been trading long but it’s already one of the most heavily invested legal businesses in the US.

 

Read more on the blog: Top BusinessTools for Legal Professionals

Like any other industry, the legal industry needs to nurture its top talent to retain it. In such a high-flying world, you don’t want to lose young talent to your competitors or out of the industry altogether. Senior lawyers cannot expect for junior members to emerge from college fully developed and ready to take the reins. In other words, such talent must be nurtured and promoted. No matter how busy your firm, spend time every day being a good mentor to harness the skills of team members.

 

Identify Relevant Skills

You should make a priority of recognizing and identifying the unique talents of each team member. Who would make a great partner? Who would make a great administrator or practice manager? Who are the best debaters or have the best courtroom performance? As a result, channeling those skills into relevant pathways will help you make the best of those skills. Those employees will also experience greater job satisfaction from skills they are good at and enjoy doing.

 

Develop Soft Skills First

Soft skills are transferable and include things such as resilience under pressure, communication, and teamwork. None of these are job specific but are relevant to all roles. Without soft skills, you won’t have the framework of the learning process to mentor and coach the employee. Above all, they will not learn from their success or mistakes and apply them to any future role or task without soft skills.

 

Know the Difference Between Coach and Mentor

To harness employee skills, you need to learn the difference and apply both accordingly.

• Mentoring is long-term, providing regular input across the board. It’s being on hand to address a range of issues. It’s career development.
• Coaching is short-term. It’s used to tackle specific issues that the employee is trying to learn, to overcome a specific difficulty

Coaching can be (and is) used together with mentoring. Different people could also take on these roles. The most experienced person on a task could play coach. The mentor should be the best nurturer in terms of constructive criticism and encouragement.

 

Discuss Skills and Goals with Employees

When discussing the potential career pathway of an employee, you should acquire their input. They may differ on their opinion of their skills and attributes. What you may identify as useful they may see as a weakness. Some people will leap at the chance to develop their career in a certain direction; others may require a slow and methodical process.

 

Interested in learning more? Read about the benefits of working remotely.

2018 was the year of remote working and the trend shows no sign of slowing in 2019. Essentially, it is the ability and framework to permit employees to work from home or another place. For example, an employer in New York can have employees in Los Angeles without issue. Driven by technology such as the Cloud, remote working is changing how we work and remote working for legal professionals is becoming a norm.

 

Talent Pool Not Geographically Limited

The legal profession is tough and firms need access to the best available talent. The traditional static workplace means hiring is geographically limited to a reasonable area. A small number may be willing to relocate. With remote working, you can employ a person several states away (time zone permitting). Harnessing the best employees for your legal team is potentially limitless.

 

Remote Working Removes Commute Issues

To employees in any job, the commute – no matter how short – is the most stressful part of the workday. Eliminating the commute entirely provides several advantages. Lateness is reduced. When employees spend less time commuting, they don’t need to get up so early and feel refreshed in the mornings. Employees who are more relaxed and refreshed are also more productive.

 

Flexible Working Creates Happier Employees

Evidence suggests that employees with a remote working option are happier in their work. As noted, they are also more productive. In turn, employee retention is higher; they are less likely to look for alternative opportunities and less likely to move if approached by a recruiter. In an industry such as legal, keeping high-quality employees on board is vital to the continued success of the firm.

 

Reduced Costs for Everyone

Three are many ways in which permitting remote working can save your business money. Remote working for legal professionals is no different. Firstly, there is the potential for less office space which is one of the highest expenses. Your premises will only be as large as you need it to be. In a recent poll, employees were given a hypothetical choice between a raise and the option to work remotely. The majority chose the latter.

 

Remote Working is Flexible Working

Employers do not always need to limit their employees to the hours they work to the standard 9-5. Many groups of people, parents especially, are asking for flexible working hours. The ability to start earlier or later helps groups with flexible needs. With remote working, parents can carry out their duties while maintaining parental responsibilities.

 

Have you checked out Record Grabber’s services? Check out our pricing page to learn how we can save you time and money.

Changes to how we work means outsourcing is now important for most businesses. In the medical record retrieval and storage industry, that relationship is even more important. Ongoing security is needed with the regular updates to HIPAA, for example. There are many reasons medical organizations move to outsource record retrieval and storage. From lawyers to hospitals, clinics and single practitioners, outsourcing streamlines and saves time and money.

 

Fewer Employees

The largest single cost for any business are employee salaries and benefit packages. There are two major financial benefits of outsourcing record storage and retrieval related to this. First, you don’t need to employ people for the administrative tasks of storing, overseeing, and securing your records. Secondly, your existing employees are freed up to do other things. Therefore, streamlining your workforce to do what they do best, meaning greater productivity and job satisfaction.

 

Lower Training Costs

While you can never eliminate the cost of employee training, you can avoid unnecessary costs. With in-house record storage, even an experienced employee will need time to train on your in-house procedures. Depending on your state this could mean certification and licensing. Therefore by outsourcing your storage, you eliminate the need for all of this. Once again, your skilled employees are free to pursue tasks that benefit your business.

 

Less Office Space

Record storage and retrieval requires physical space. For paper copies, that means a storage room which will only grow over time. For digital copies, that means a server room. In both cases, this is physical space that could be given over to something else. As a result, the costs of setting up and maintaining such physical or virtual space is potentially immense. Have you factored in the costs of adapting rooms, and securing and maintaining them?

 

Lower Technology Costs

We’ve already discussed the need for server space. However, record storage and retrieval has other technology costs. You might need to invest in specialist software and security packages. Then there is the hidden cost of a cyber attack which could happen even with effective procedures in place all the time. These costs are all but eliminated and the risks reduced to minimal when outsourcing record retrieval and storage.

 

There are many more benefits to outsourcing your record retrieval and storage. 

Start outsourcing your record retrieval today with Record Grabber. Get started with Record Grabber.

It’s a true that we get what we pay for. Free learning tools for lawyers will help with most of your functions most of the time. But sometimes, you need special tools and training to upskill. When free packages are not enough, turn to some of these incredible paid-for services for a little extra.

 

Praktio

Praktio is one of the biggest names in law tools, founded by lawyers, for lawyers. It’s the brainchild of Michael L. Bloom who harnessed the power of gamification for online interactive training. It teaches a range of practical skills including drafting, analysis, and negotiation. Bloom says it’s the ideal place for new (and experienced) lawyers to make mistakes in contract law to avoid making them in the real world. It has a practical Deal Simulator where users can set up a virtual deal, gamified proofreading, and programs for entrepreneurs.

Visit Praktio’s website.

 

Coursera

This paid resource provides access to a wide variety of training courses, not just in law. From practical upskilling courses for general training, formal qualifications and even degrees, there are few databases with as much depth as the Coursera website. It harnesses a large number of virtual courses available to anyone, anywhere in the world. Are you looking to study International Law in Action in Germany? You can without having to leave the country; it also lists courses available locally. Joining is free, but the courses must be paid for.

Visit Coursera’s website.

 

American Bar Association

The ABA is the country’s most prestigious law association, representing everyone regardless of their specialty. It should be, in most cases, the first port of call for new information happening in the legal industry. That also applies to education and training. They are the accreditation body for legal training in the US and provide a full directory of all courses. Not just academic undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, but also certification and license and helping lawyers upskill and retrain.

Visit the American Bar Association’s website.

 

Procertas

Technology is such an intrinsic part of life. Law may have largely been unaffected as a profession, but increasingly, new graduates are having to prove themselves technologically adept. But older members of staff may not be adept need training. Procertas offers technology assessment for legal professionals, ensuring they are up to date with the basic technological requirements. Their main package is “LTA” – Legal Technology Assessment, providing training in Microsoft Office and working with PDF files as necessary tools of the modern law trade.

Visit Procertas’ website.

 

Did you miss our previous post on Free Learning Tools for Lawyers? Check it out here!