Medical chronology
A medical chronology is a dated summary of a plaintiff's medical records. It lists every visit, provider, diagnosis, procedure and bill in order, and gives a page number for each one so you can check it against the record.
It is the document most of the work in a treating case runs through. The demand is written from it, the deposition is prepared from it, and the value of the claim is argued from it.
Two things make one useful rather than merely long.
Every entry cites its page. A chronology you cannot trace back to the record has to be trusted rather than checked, which is not a reasonable thing to do with a file you will be examined on.
It surfaces the problems, not just the events. Gaps in treatment, a provider who appears once and never again, billing that does not reconcile, a prior injury in the history. These are what the other side will find, and finding them first is most of the value.
How they get built
Traditionally by hand. A paralegal reads the set and types the dates, which for a routine soft tissue case runs a day to a day and a half, and for a treating file with several providers can run three or four days.
Some firms outsource it to a vendor who prices per page. Some now run the first pass through software and have a person review the output rather than build it, which changes what the person is doing from typing to checking.
What medical record review actually costs a plaintiff firm
Not ready to book a call
Send us five pages of a record set. We will send back what we found in it.
Five pages is enough, redacted however you like. You get a short video back within two business days showing what a chronology would surface from it: the dates, the gaps, the things worth knowing before the other side finds them.
- Send five pages of a real file. Redact whatever you like first.
- We run them and record what comes out, including what it misses.
- You get the video within two business days. If there is nothing worth showing, we say so.