How to Manage Retrieved Medical Documents?

How to Manage Retrieved Medical Documents?

Protected health information, PHI is necessary in claim processing and law suits. This information is also important in many treatment decisions. The patient health data is being well protected by the hospitals and doctors and can be retrieved only on the patient’s authorization. The record retrieval process is lengthy and tedious as it has multiple steps and requires a lot of documentation.  There are specialized companies working for medical record retrieval. They help to access the medical records faster and more efficiently.  Retrieved medical records many a times create a pile of documents to review and require a lot of time to sort and assess. Retrieved documents can contain nurses’ handwritten notes, flow sheet, scribbled pages, illegible handwriting and illegible dates which makes the organization of the documents difficult.  How to manage these documents?

The scanned copies are used for reorganizing the documents chronologically and reviewing them through compact summaries helps to reduce the time and effort to prepare medical data for claims or legal suits. Records chronology which helps the legal person to understand the flow of treatment events better by arranging documents ascending or descending with proper date. Sorting the documents based on provider also aides in knowing treatment history. This also helps to detect missing or incomplete document. These missing or incomplete documents can again be fetched from the provider to assure integrity of the data.

Summarization helps to reduce time spent on extracting the vital information from medical records. Neatly extracted information and well-documented data is a base of good summary. Handwritten or partially illegible documents can be summarized by referring to related documents. Multiple pages of flow sheet or assessment sheet can be easily reviewed by a very précised summary in one page.  

Managing retrieved documents using reorganization and summarization has following advantages:

1. Very less time spent on reviewing the pile of documents.
2. Very well organized documents help to understand the sequence of events which helps to track the treatment rendered.
3. Well-referenced (hyperlinked to the original document) helps to refer to the original data.
4. Handwritten data and partial illegible data is well read and summarized.
5. Reduces paper work.
6. Missing documents are well traced.
7. Saves manpower and money spent.

Conclusion:

ITCube in cooperation with medical record retrieval companies provides customized medical record reorganization and medical records summarization services to law firms and insurance companies. Team of domain expertise understands the specifications required and caters the needs. Handling large volumes in stipulated time and providing well-organized medical records has proved to be the keystone for more than 10 years of exponentially growing business associations with satisfied customers.