Most personal injury cases already are such a pain to endure. It requires a lot of effort, time, money, and, worst of all, paperwork. To succeed in winning a personal injury case, you are going to need to prove that your injury or disability keeps you from performing any type of job, which requires records from hospital visits, reports from your job, etc. Medical summaries are extremely important pieces of evidence to bring to the case for obvious reasons: it backs up your claims of injury or disability.
However, medical summaries are very difficult and tedious do, and most attorneys or law firms often opt to send out such a pursuit to specialized firms that are specifically trained to come through pages and pages of medical records to create that summary. Continue reading for some challenges one can run into while making a Medical Summary:
1. Time-Consuming
A personal injury case is already a time-consuming event, between the court appearances, paperwork, and the long expanses of time that the court system takes for any case. But, medical summaries can often be the most time-consuming, depending on how many medical records one has to go through. If the case requires the attorney to look at thousands of pages, it is going to take a long time. Taking up more time also may make the case more expensive. If attorneys have to work overtime (or realistically have their staff work overtime), it will cost them more money, which, consequently, will cost you more in the end.
2. Difficult to Understand
After years of medical school, Doctor’s use a language that looks Greek to anyone who hasn’t studied medicine for most of their lives. Lawyers have not studied this language, so deciphering medical records may be a job more suited for Dan Brown and Robert Langdon than for mere lawyers. Therefore, aside from combing through the ton of pages, it will take even longer to decipher the language. I mean, why do they have to say pulmonary instead of just saying heart for Pete’s sake.
3. Creating Accurate Timelines
Chances are that medical records aren’t all in one place and may not necessarily be in order. Perhaps your doctor referred you to another, more specialized physician. Maybe you were admitted to the hospital while on vacation in another state or country connected to the injury or disability. It’s like putting together a thousand-piece puzzle except your whole case can rely on this puzzle.
