A thorough and detailed medical report is vital in every personal injury and clinical negligence case. In order to prepare such a report and to reach a conclusion on causation and prognosis, the medical expert needs to fully understand and comment upon the treatment received and the impact of any relevant pre existing history. This demands that there has been effective medical records collation and pagination.
Busy GPs and hospitals do not have the time or the inclination to provide solicitors with properly paginated and indexed medical records. Solicitors often do not have the time or resources to fully research the medical records beyond a cursory check that nothing obvious is missing from the records.
Medico legal experts can overlook important entries in the medical records, because they are out of order or simply missing. In complex cases, where the records come from a variety of providers or have to be updated as the case progresses, it is easy for the bundle of medical records to become a huge, unwieldy set of documents, containing vital evidence that may not come to light.
At trial, the Judge can become frustrated by the volume of the medical records and struggle with locating the important documents, because of the haphazard way in which notes are often provided.
We provide our clients with a service which overcomes all of these problems, because we make the medical records simple to follow and understand with a very clear and user friendly collation, pagination and indexing system. In some cases, a chronology is provided to aid understanding of the case and we will advise on whether any further records are missing from the bundle available.
The service is prompt, efficient, high quality and cost effective – our fees can either be included as a disbursement in the case, or because our job is being carried out as an agent on behalf of the solicitor, it can be charged out at an appropriate fee earners rate by the solicitor (Smith Graham v The Lord Chancellor’s Department 1999)
Medical Records Collation can often be overlooked as an important tool in the success of a case, but we will help to put that right.