Lawyers use various materials to help their clients win cases and defend them against a legal claim or suit. One of these materials that can be helpful to lawyers is a medical summary. Preparing medical summaries, however, is done by a third-party service provider, and not a healthcare facility or a law office.

A medical summary is a document that provides accurate and comprehensive details of a client’s medical history, including injuries, medication, and treatments done within a specific period. When used for legal cases, a medical summary helps lawyers understand a medical action about a specific case. Such document also helps lawyers communicate related medical information to the court or other parties involved in the case.

What Does a Medical Summary for Lawyers Look Like?

Medical summaries differ in format according to the purpose they will serve. For instance, a medical record summary for lawyers is different from the summary that will be used for Life Expectancy Certificate or Insurance. For legal cases, whether for pre-litigation or during trial preparation, the medical summary focuses on the promptness of service, efficacy, and outcome. Every record is an exhibit in its own right.

Lawyers’ medical summaries include information that is relevant to the case, such as the time when the ambulance was called and when it arrived, what treatment was given en route, the time of arrival at the hospital, the condition of the patient upon arrival, the triage procedure, and triage findings. All this data is tracked to the minute and reported precisely to be able to show the patient’s conditions, medical procedure timeline, and types of treatment given, as well as the outcome.

If the document is for personal injury due to an accident, the medical summary will include the mechanism of injury, when it happened, and how was it dealt with. The patient’s first statement of what happened is essential.

When done properly, a medical summary adds significant value at trials. This is why preparing medical summaries is key to helping lawyers win legal cases for their clients.

The Importance of Preparing Medical Summaries for Lawyers

A medical summary is an important tool for lawyers as it helps them build a stronger case by providing a clear and concise picture of their client’s medical situation. Below are some of the benefits of preparing medical summaries for legal cases.

1. It provides a clear understanding of the client’s medical issues.

Lawyers may not always have a medical background or understanding of the terminology used in medical records. A medical summary provides a concise and understandable overview of a client’s medical history, diagnosis, and treatment, which helps lawyers better understand the medical issues involved in the case.

2. It saves time and reduces costs.

Preparing medical summaries can save lawyers time and reduce expenses associated with reviewing and analyzing huge volumes of medical records. By providing a straightforward document that summarizes a patient’s most relevant medical information, lawyers can easily determine key issues related to the case and focus their attention on how to argue about or defend their client.

3. It helps support a case.

A comprehensive medical summary can help lawyers build a stronger case by presenting the most important medical information of the client related to their case. It also aids in identifying any potential gaps in medical treatment or issues that need to be addressed, such as establishing the extent of an injury and the setback that follows.

4. It facilitates better communication among involved parties.

Medical summaries can be shared with other parties involved in the case, such as the judge, witnesses, opposing counsel, or insurance adjusters. By preparing medical summaries ahead of time and providing a clear and concise copy to relevant parties, lawyers can establish communication and ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding the medical issues of the case.

Additionally, the medical summary can also be used as part of the response to the judge’s or prosecutor’s cross-questioning, or during a deposition.

5. It supports settlement negotiations and litigation.

Medical summaries can be used to support settlement negotiations by providing a clear picture of the medical issues involved in the case. In litigation, such documents can be used as evidence to support a client’s claims or defenses or to create a non-contestable compensation demand.

Preparing Medical Summaries: Key Features of Telegenisys

The Telegenisys medico-legal team works together with both medical experts and legal professionals who are well-experienced in reviewing medical records and preparing medical summaries according to clients’ needs and requests. We carefully inspect, analyze, and generate the records to weed out duplicates and non-essential routine documents. The outcome is an accurate, easy-to-understand, fact-based, and insightful summary that lawyers and clients can benefit from.

Below are some key features you will get if you leave preparing medical summaries to our team’s expertise.

Visualize Medical Records (VMR) Application: The VMR is programmed to arrange all events chronologically by date and time from the onset to the latest available record.

Reference to 5M+ Healthcare Providers: Our system has access to over 5 million+ healthcare providers with declared specialties. We verify every provider’s NPI registration and declared specialties (taxonomy codes).

Complete and Comprehensive List of Medical Conditions: Every medical condition with detailed ICD 10/9 billing code references is sourced from the CMS data tables and these show you conditions and condition history. This is the most authoritative database of its kind used for billing medical services.

Medical Data, Terminologies, and Abbreviations: Every medical abbreviation is elaborated and referenced. Our system is designed to reference over 500,000 medical attributes providing clear reference and categorization of medical data.

National Drug Code from FDA: Every drug that is known to the FDA through the national DRUG CODE INDEX is part of our system, enabling us to provide drug use analytics.

Seamless Export to Legal Software: If you are using legal software or tools, such as EHR or any kind of database, you can easily export the patient data into your systems for further analysis. All data referenced in the VMR is converted into a structured database in your preferred format, such as comma-separated-values (CSV) or XML/JSON files for rapid and accurate portability.

Quick Data Updating: For updating chronologies, these databases provide the baseline to build on previous work rather than starting from a completely new set of records and paying for analysis again.

Quick Referencing and Hyperlinking: When generating chronologies, our VMR creates bookmarks, hyperlinks, and indexes that allow a user to swiftly move through medical records while reviewing references in a single click and without going through thousands of page references.

Preparing medical summaries for lawyers is fast and easy with Telegenisys. We offer a complete solution for the compilation, organization, and summarization of medical records so that legal professionals can have a clear understanding of a client’s medical information and build a stronger case. For professional and reliable medical records summary services, reach out to us, and let’s discuss your needs.