A legal nurse consultant is a qualified practitioner in the
nursing field who works as a legal advisor on medical-related litigations. Legal
nurse consultants have functioned as collaborators and strategists in
various practice areas since the early 1980s. They support medically-related
litigations like personal injury, mass tort, and medical malpractice. In such
legal proceedings, a legal nurse consultant acts as a medical expert, assisting
lawyers in understanding medical technology and healthcare issues.
Legal nurse reviewers play a
vital role during medical record reviewing process. It is a significant step in
litigations involving an injury or medical negligence. Let us check out the
role played by legal nurse consultants in helping attorneys.
Legal nurse consultants retrieve
the relevant medical records required for the lawsuit. The medical records may
be segregated based on the healthcare facilities and healthcare providers. Any
additional or missing medical records would be identified during this step. The
missing records, required for the lawsuit may be requested, following the HIPAA
guidelines.
The legal nurse consultant will
sort and index the medical records after receiving the missing records. The medical charts
will be arranged in chronological order. Bates numbering the records would help
in the easy identification of each chart. After sorting the medical records, medical
record review will be conducted, which is the integral task of a legal
nurse consultant. Being a medical expert, legal nurse reviewers can quickly
identify the medical records significant to the subject lawsuit. The critical
evidence in the medical records will be easily collected and presented in a
systematic medical
record review report. This will help the attorneys to study the damages
sustained by the claimant easily.
Legal nurse reviewers assist
injury attorneys in determining the type of expert that is required for their
case. They help in locating a certified and knowledgeable medical professional
to provide an opinion. Apart from that, they also assist attorneys in preparing
fact sheets for mass
torts, pain
and suffering charts for injury
lawsuits, etc.
Conclusion
Legal nurse consultants are only
professionals in clinical medicine, but they also have a strong understanding
of the legal elements of treatment and the healthcare system. They form an
integral part of any medical
record review outsourcing company. Being experts in the medical arena, they
could easily identify issues like medical
record tampering and medical negligence.
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