Category: industry

Part 2: Word of Mouth and Professional Networking

In the last post, we pointed out the necessity for businesses in any industry to have an online presence. However, this online presence should never be at the expense of marketing your law firm offline world or in the “real world”. The business of law is inextricably linked to the real world and that’s why you should also have a great marketing strategy to engage with people as individuals and as groups.

 

Apply for Ratings

Before you spend any money on marketing, check out the ways of improving the esteem of your business. Examples include quality markets such as achieving a 10.0 mark for Avvo (the online rating system) and other industry standards. These marks and awards suggest to potential clients that you are reliable, knowledgeable and professional. They will speak for themselves with very little effort required on your part as customers look for such marks of quality in making their decision to choose a law provider. This can go on marketing material, on your website, and promoted throughout your premises as a statement that this is a quality legal establishment. Such marks are great for branding because they are simple and memorable, and clients will tend to remember them.

 

Ask Clients for Web Reviews

There is no better marketing method than word of mouth, and few better for inbound marketing than genuine reviews, whether on the web or in trade publications. A glossy website, social media outreach, and a great content strategy could be wasted effort if potential new clients are unable to evaluate the quality of your services. Clients may find reviews on the various search engines, but also through professional service websites. Combined, they inform clients about the level of service and achievements, specialties, and firm culture. Just as any retail customer, reviews are often the first thing clients look for when vetting a law firm to represent them.

 

Referrals

There is no better form of spreading the word than clients recommending your services to other potential clients. This is true for any business and one of the best ways to grow your business: reputation and the eagerness of others to spread it for you. People listen to their trusted contacts – whether it’s friends or family, colleagues, or contacts in other businesses. They will not always remember to suggest such a service to their contacts. That being why it’s so important for you to serve gentle reminders to your current clients. Questionnaires on “how we did”, or contract packs with documentation such as business card or a flyer asking that they recommend your firm to others if they feel they have had a generally good experience.

 

Improve Your Community Reputation

The first way of improving your community reputation include some of the most tried and tested methods for all industries. This includes joining trade associations and attending networking events. These aren’t just about increasing your visibility for clients within those networks (although they certainly help). It’s also about reaching out to colleagues and competitors to build a bond and meaning within the industry. This may not directly lead to clients, but increases the likelihood of referrals from contacts whose specialty differs from yours. If you’re visible, the chance of this type of referral is much higher.

Engagement with the public community is also a growing expectation, especially from millennials now entering the workplace. They expect businesses to act with integrity and ethically where possible. Typically, this means being seen caring about the local community, activities and events, and helping with funding or physical help. Sponsoring community events is a great way to raise your profile. As well as networking, it’s an easy form of advertising, but some clients like action as well as words. Having an ethical policy is a good idea and some clients will be drawn to you because of it.

 

Did you miss How to Effectively Market Your Law Firm Part 1? Read it here now!

Part 1: Digital Marketing

Businesses in any industry must market their services and expertise. That has always been true but in the modern world of the internet, it’s more important than ever. A digital marketing strategy helps any business keep up with the current environment. No law degree in the world prepares lawyers for how to market effectively. This is how to market your law firm – remain relevant and effectively reach out to potential clients, regardless of the specialty of law in which a business operates.

 

Have a Website and Keep it Relevant

It should go without saying that all businesses require a website. The internet is the first place that new clients look, both corporate and individual, to find a law firm. Having a website is good for local SEO and search engines list locations based on public data. However, it’s just as relevant to keep a website up to date. A new theme or design may be required every few years based on modern trends. In the last ten years, website design concept has evolved to include mobile connectivity – the ability to adapt to the device on which the user is presently browsing the web. Other more recent trends include UI (User Interface) which concerns the ease of navigation and UX (User eXperience) which looks at the overall experience of using a website. Poor or outdated website design reflects negatively on businesses that fail to keep up to date with trends.

 

Use Authoritative Content

The term “content is king” has always been true of social media marketing. In 2019, major changes to the algorithms of the major search engines means law and other businesses can no longer afford to see content creation and curation as a frivolous expense or an optional extra. Content may be videos, business blog articles, newsletters, opinions written by professionals on regulatory change and anything else that viewers may wish to consume.

There are multiple benefits to having a content strategy:

• It’s good for SEO (search engine optimization) visibility on search engines
• The business can position itself as a “thought leader” (an expert in the field and a valuable resource)
• When content is shareable, it becomes part of a marketing campaign where social media users will share articles of interest to friends and colleagues

It’s no longer optional, or a frivolous and unnecessary expenditure for many businesses, but a vital part of a marketing strategy, to produce regular authoritative content. Clients will expect to see your thoughts and analyses.

 

Become a Social Media Master

For maximum exposure, a law firm needs to reach out to potential clients on as many platforms as possible. The term “social media” is perhaps a little outdated as the major sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Instagram are ways in which a law firm may connect with clients and potential clients. Content strategy becomes easier to share when they are posted to various social media platforms. Plus, mobile devices such as smartphones are rapidly overtaking the laptop and the desktop computer as web research implements. It’s easier to carry a smartphone and therefore facilitates communication and web research than carrying a larger device. The more shares that a piece of content has, and the greater the social media presence, the easier it will be for potential clients to find your law firm.

 

Digital Ad Campaigns

Having a good website and keeping track of social media is useful for inbound marketing (providing content for people to find and approach you). But your law firm will need to be far more active in reaching out to new clients. That’s why you will need local SEO driven ad campaigns to reach out to new clients. Passive advertising will only get you so far. Target ads to specific keywords and to your local area – either the city or the nearest counties within the state. There are many ways you can do this: through listed advertisements on search engines, buying advertising space on social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, through ad clicks on affiliate websites, and advertorial type content on paid blogs.

 

Come back to the blog for How to Market Your Law Firm Part 2!

A medical chronology and summary is immensely helpful in understanding a person’s medical history and treatment from start to finish. More than that, there are clear benefits to your client. Above all, good quality and succinct medical chronologies and summaries are proven to deliver faster resolution and higher success rates.

What’s the importance?

Time-saving.

Legal teams don’t have to sort through potentially hundreds of pages of medical records, sometimes spanning over years or decades. Insurance claims and cases going through the court system can take months or years! Anything that can speed up this process and deliver clear evidence is helpful.

Clarity based on facts only approach.

The elimination of personal opinion – even professional opinion – helps bring clarity to a claim or case. As a result, these documents list only the facts which reduce the grey areas over which lawyers may argue in interpreting minor details.

Wide audience.

Designed to be easy to read, they can be understood by people in a wide range of services and sectors including insurance and legal, many of whom will not have the background in medical treatment and procedures. Therefor when information is simplified, it is difficult for anyone to confuse or misinterpret the details.

Full disclosure.

This type of document focuses on medical details, treatments, medications, dates, and so on. This means it will provide a full list of treatment and surgery in a concise and detailed yet shortened report highlighting not just the key issues, but all relevant issues. With full disclosure, it is possible to make a fully informed decision for whatever issue is presently being investigated.

Multi-use.

They’re useful to a wide variety and range of professionals. It provides full details of a medical history for medical professionals and a list of all treatments that the patient has received when it comes to an insurance claim. For lawyers involved in speaking for the client, it provides a full list of everything necessary in the patient’s care.

Quick and easy settlement.

Without a medical summary, insurance or court settlements will take more time and incur more cost to everyone. So it would mean sorting through many lengthy medical records looking for relevant information. A Medical Chronology and Summary are no more than 5-6 pages and list everything that interested parties will need to know.

Learn about Record Grabber’s medical chronology and summary pricing here – RG pricing.

A medical insurance claim can often be a long and complex process. It’s important that all stakeholders have all the vital information to hand at every necessary stage. Similarly, when a case goes to the courts, they too need as much information as possible to ensure quick and decisive resolution.

The problem is that medical cases can be long, complex, and full of medical jargon that insurers, lawyers, and juries cannot understand and do not have the time to sort through. It’s important to have all relevant information in hand – quickly and in as brief and unambiguous a form as possible. In short, that’s why medical chronologies and summaries are so important to a claims process.

Medical Chronology

A Medical Chronology in this industry is simply a list of a patient’s medical history relevant to a case. They’re designed as a list of events
of a patient’s medical history placed in chronological order. They are designed to be: concise, containing only the facts (without opinion or bias), and offer insight into the case. Unlike medical and legal documents, they are designed for easy reading for a wide audience who may not be familiar with medical jargon and shorthand. Most importantly, they are customizable to suit the needs of a case.

Medical Summary

A Medical Summary includes the chronology and a comprehensive summary of each event that takes place. This includes information like medication that the patient is taking or has taken (including dosages), their medical conditions, and treatments. It also contains details on contact with all medical professionals, their relevant diagnoses, and tests like blood, urine, and cholesterol. Current treatment plans being received, major surgeries, and any devices (for example a pacemaker) are also included in a Summary.

How can we help?

Record Grabber’s medical chronology and summary service is invaluable in getting your cases closed faster. Different levels of detail allow for you to pick what fits with your specific case and budget! Learn more about our different levels here – medical chronology and summary guide.

Happy new year from the Record Grabber team! We had a great 2018 with new challenges, growth, Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding, and Serena losing her cool at the US open. Cheers to 2019!

Wishing everyone an amazing year full of new successes, adventures, happiness, and another season of Stranger Things.

Sincerely,
Your friends at Record Grabber

Businesses must do all they can in these modern times to cut costs. That’s understandable; it’s partly why big investments are taken at the executive level with large cost analyses. Yet in the modern healthcare industry, organizations must ask of themselves not whether they can afford to outsource their record retrieval, but whether they can afford the time and resource investment of in-house record retrieval and storage. Record Grabber has the solution.

Overwhelmed Staff

If the modern workplace can be summed up in one sentence, it’s “doing more with less”. Your employees at all levels are expected to learn more things and less time to do it in. For the healthcare sector, that means a greater potential for data breaches which means fines under HIPAA audit. With an overstretched workforce, nobody wants to waste time on follow-ups with cases, making repeat phone calls, and hanging on the line while contacts check information.

Unresponsive Clients

Too much time is wasted chasing contacts who have not returned a promised call. Your work may be delayed to the detriment of everyone else when a promised phone call does not arrive. Your employee must then use some of their valuable time to call the contact again, or compose an email, and wait for a response. The more time spent chasing up contacts is less time dedicated to the processes of their actual job. Not only could this potentially delay cases, but it could also lead to mistakes through a hectic workplace and possibly to misplaced data and a data breach.

Record Destruction

Record destruction is a legal necessity; unfortunately, it’s time-consuming and prone to complications and risks. Older shredders can break down and not shred paper quite as well as a larger, professional shredders that can handle high volumes. Some need to be stored before shredding if the person responsible has other duties or limited to the amount of time they may shred. Improperly shredded documentation increases the risk of theft or loss and that too is a HIPAA violation.

Why You Need to Outsource Record Retrieval

All these things waste time for your employees and your organization. It’s always better to outsource. Record Grabber not only keeps electronic data safe from theft or loss, but we also free up time for your employees to get on with the processes of their jobs. Also, with the strong professional links we have forged with others in our industry, we guarantee a faster turnaround on requests.

Avoid future issues – use Record Grabber! Sign up here!

There is nothing wrong with fearing the prospect of a hacker invading your server. We have been warned about this in the workplace repeatedly since the internet went mainstream. With ransomware becoming common, hacking is a real and genuine threat to data security. Ransomware is a type of malware that locks down a server’s data and threatens to destroy it unless a ransom is paid – usually in bitcoin – but hacking is not the most common form of data breach.

The Biggest Source of Data Breach – Unauthorized Disclosure

According to Statista, the biggest source of data breach for 2017 in US Healthcare was “unauthorized disclosure”. In other words, unauthorized individuals have access to sensitive information to which permission has not been granted. It can include misplaced files left in public places, information left open on a abandoned computer screen, or when employees give another employee access to their work computer without sufficient privileges. This computer will have access to data that the unauthorized person will easily access. Even if they have no intention of accessing that data, the ability to do so is a data breach. According to a recent survey, 40% of employees healthcare have or would allow an unauthorized colleague to use their terminal. This has increased since 2014.

Online Shopping and Personal Communications

Most employers don’t allow personal communications except in emergency situations. However, some allow some leeway on checking social media while others do not have the infrastructure in place to block employees from accessing such sites. This leaves employees open to using e-commerce services at work. While most transactions go through well-known sites, according to the survey mentioned above, 52% shop online and 34% did not know how to identify an unsecured site. Just 49% correctly identified the unlocked padlock as the correct symbol. Unsecured sites could steal credit card details, access data, or force the download of malware that could steal patient data.

The More Employees, the Higher the Risk

These are the two most common issues regarding data breach, demonstrating a critical lack of understanding of basic security and data protection in the workplace. The more employees you have, the higher the risk of a data breach. In these instances, it may be better to outsource your data retrieval and storage to remove the biggest challenge – unauthorized sharing of information.

Avoid future issues – use Record Grabber! Sign up here!

Shopping around for a record retrieval company is a real pain. Qualifying that you are getting the best coverage and up-to-date data security standards with your provider is key. One thing you may not have considered is if your record retrieval company keeps up with the statutory state medical record copy fees. With Record Grabber, we are diligent in ensuring we remain up to date to get our clients the best prices possible.

 

Fees are Subject to Change

When a health care provider, law firm, health insurance company or other entity that may require regular access to patient data, you will pay for this service based on legal requirement. Organization service charges are subject to negotiation and tailored service. Part of that cost will include the statutory charge for accessing State Medical Records. Each state government is responsible for setting its own fees and these are subject to change. Unless the cost goes up significantly, you are unlikely to see much of a change in your provider fees, even when the cost goes down.

But keeping a regular check on what each state charges as a statutory fee for access can help save your organization money by reducing your costs. Cost calculations structure can even change. Some apply limits to the cost while others do not.

 

The Varying State-By-State Cost

Each state in the US has its own costs. For example, Alabama state charges $1 per page for anything up to 25 pages. Anything beyond that is charged at $0.50c per page and a search fee of $5. In Pennsylvania, there is a search and retrieval fee of $21.69, a $1.46 charge for pages 1-20, $1.08 for pages 21-60 and $0.36 per page from page 61 onwards. This is just two states. Although most are simple and well-defined, it can be complex to navigate the total cost. What may seem like a simple costing is not necessarily the cheapest from your provider. That’s before you get to specific records such as x-rays, anything stored on microfiche or specialist data.

As with everything, it’s important to shop around and compare prices and level of service. It’s nice to not have any surprises when it comes to state medical record copy fees. Ensure that your medical record retrieval company is up to date.

 

How can Record Grabber help you? Get started here!

Businesses must do all they can in these modern times to cut costs. That’s understandable; it’s partly why big investments are taken at the executive level with large cost analyses. Yet in the modern healthcare industry, organizations must ask of themselves not whether they can afford to outsource their record retrieval, but whether they can afford the time and resource investment of in-house record retrieval and storage. Record Grabber has the solution.

 

Overwhelmed Staff

The modern workplace can be summed up in one sentence, “do more with less.” Your employees at all levels are expected to learn more and take less time to do it in. For the healthcare sector, that means a greater potential for data breaches which means fines under HIPAA audit. With an overstretched workforce, in-house record retrieval is time better spent doing other work. Countless hours are wasted on following up, making repeat phone calls, and sitting on hold while contacts check information.

 

Unresponsive Providers

Too much time is wasted chasing providers who have not filled a request. Everyone’s work may be delayed when a promised phone call does not arrive. Your employee must then use some of their valuable time to call the contact again, or compose an email, and wait for a response. The more time spent chasing records is less time dedicated to the processes of their actual job. In-house record retrieval could not only delay cases, but lead to mistakes, misplaced data, and a data breach.

 

Record Destruction

Record destruction is a legal necessity; unfortunately, it’s time-consuming and prone to complications and risks. Older shredders can break down and not shred documents as well as a larger, professional shredder that can handle high volumes. Some need to be stored before shredding if the person responsible has other duties or limited to the amount of time they may shred. Improperly shredded documents increase the risk of theft or loss, leading to a HIPAA violation.

 

Why You Need to Outsource Record Retrieval

All these complications for in-house record retrieval are wasted hours for your employees and your organization. It’s always better to outsource. Record Grabber not only keeps electronic data safe from theft or loss, but we also free up time for your employees to get on with the processes of their jobs. Also, with the strong professional links we have forged with others in our industry, we retrieve records faster.

 

Get started with Record Grabber today.

In the 20 years of HIPAA, it has evolved to keep up with the ever-changing needs of patients and in line with technology. Audits are now a regular part of compliance monitoring that we should all be on our guard. Yet in mid-August, Federal government officials announced a new round of HIPAA violations.

 

Hacking was a Large Part of these HIPAA Violations

The figures are sobering and show that there are still problems with even basic implementation. Although hacks can’t always be helped, sometimes, human error is solely responsible. This was the biggest cause of HIPAA violations for the year so far.

• In mid-August, 30 more health data breaches were added to 2018’s tally. One of these was a major phishing hack affecting the health data of over 1.4m people
• Those 30 new cases made a total of 229 so far this year with a reported 6.1m people affected

Both of these datasets came from the Department of Health and Human Services’ HIPAA Breach Reporting Tool website. We also know that around 4.3m of the 6.1m total victims were the result of data hacks. That leaves around 2m data breaches for other reasons.

 

Unauthorized Access and Carelessness Make Up the Rest

The report listed unauthorized access or disclosure of information as accounting for data breaches relating to 803,000 people. One incident was responsible for around ¼ of these. MedEvolve based in Arkansas was found guilty of a data breach after leaving the data of a former customer on the FTP server, data which was then made publicly available on the internet.  Around 205,000 were affected.

The next largest was data theft and loss, affecting some 677,000 individuals across 41 breaches. The majority of these were the theft or loss of paper and film records. Improper disposal was the next largest, also of paper and film records improperly handled during destruction. Finally, inadequate or a lack of encryption affected 80,000 people.

 

Why It’s Better to Outsource

Negotiating HIPAA can be a minefield. Even with the best intentions and rigorous protections, employees can also make mistakes. These mistakes can lead to data breaches and large fines. Although there are always basics to understand when it comes to this law, many of the violators could have avoided some of the trouble by outsourcing their record storage and retrieval to a digital service. It especially avoids the problems of improper disposal and theft following a break-in to physical premises.