How Can I Automate Medical Record Retrieval?

21 Mar How Can I Automate Medical Record Retrieval?

Automation is a hot topic within legal tech, as it’s one of the most impactful and achievable uses of AI and machine learning. Applying automation to medical record retrieval, in particular, helps law firms and insurance companies eliminate time-consuming manual tasks, reduce delays, and improve operational accuracy. In fact, by leveraging digital workflows and integrations, organizations can accelerate case and claims processing at scale.

If you’ve landed on this page, you’ve likely been wondering, “How can I automate medical record retrieval for my firm?” 

The answer, in short, is to partner with retrieval experts who understand AI-driven tools and how to use them to deliver accurate results. 

Why Automating Medical Record Retrieval Matters for Legal and Insurance Teams

Medical record retrieval is a crucial element of case and claims processing for legal and insurance teams. Yet manual retrieval methods are time-consuming, prone to delays, and pose a higher security risk.

By leveraging automation, teams are better equipped to:

• Improve closure speed – Manual retrieval slows case preparation, claims processing, and underwriting. Switching to automation boosts case and claim cycle time and resolution time performance metrics.
• Meet deadlines – Manual retrieval methods can lengthen turnaround times and impact timeline adherence, increasing the likelihood of missed deadlines. Missing external deadlines can significantly damage legal and health insurance outcomes, while missing internal deadlines can negatively impact staff efficiency, availability, and workflow.
  
• Reduce administrative overhead – More manual tasks require more staff hours. When you account for inflation, employment regulatory mandates, and hiring/turnover costs, salaries are only a fragment of what businesses pay to retain more employees than strictly necessary.
  
• Reduce risk – Law firms and insurance companies are leaders in risk evaluation and reduction. In addition to improving closure speeds and reducing costs, automation can boost accuracy, facilitate auditing, and tighten security loopholes, thereby reducing the risk of regulatory noncompliance and legal exposure. 

Ultimately, the method of medical record retrieval for lawyers and insurance professionals significantly impacts performance, budget, and risk, all of which factor into meeting annual goals and maintaining client satisfaction and retention. With more than 96% of hospitals and 78% of office-based physicians now relying on digital record-keeping, it’s more feasible than ever to move away from paper files and manual retrieval methods.

Common Challenges in Manual Record Retrieval

What exactly is so difficult about manual record retrieval? It’s not that any one step is insurmountable, but that the process itself relies on constant monitoring and attention to detail, especially given the inherent security risks.

For instance: 

• Fax and mail requests – With this method, private data is conveyed in both the request forms and the delivered documents. When documents are faxed, mailed, or shipped, there’s an inevitable lack of certainty over the outcome. Even with fax confirmation or shipping tracking, there’s little control over who views and distributes the paperwork, and what exactly happens to it on the recipient’s end.
  
• Email communication – Emails and their attachments can be lost, hacked, or deleted anywhere along their route. You might receive a “Sent” or “Read” receipt, but there’s a lack of oversight at the other end of the communication, including who’s monitoring the account, whether it has an escalation path to cover staffing absences and turnover, and whether it’s forwarded to nonessential viewers.
  
• Phone updates – With manual retrieval, phone call follow-ups are common. However, as with any other device- or account-specific communication method, there’s no stickiness to the original request—no total capture of all points of communication, no audit trail, no impartial record.
  

Additionally, with manual retrieval, obtaining a response from a provider varies based on each entity’s policies and staffing. There’s also a lack of accountability from clerks who may rely on memory or self-reporting of whether they received a request or phone call. 

Without a dashboard, actionable reporting, and automated escalation, it can be difficult to determine the status of a particular request or evaluate the performance of the retrieval workflow. This lack of visibility creates bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

Automation does away with these challenges. There’s clear and objective tracking of exactly who did what and when. Plus, with automated retrieval methods, teams can focus their time and energy on more specialized tasks. This explains why digitized and automated records management has already led to productivity increases of up to 50% over manual methods.

How Can I Automate Medical Record Retrieval Workflows?

Automating the medical records retrieval process requires the use of AI-driven platforms and digital health integrations to replace phone and fax retrievals. For law firms and insurance companies, the setup typically begins by selecting a cloud-based platform or engaging a retrieval vendor that leverages current technology. 

Rather than owning the entirety of the request process through to final file delivery and management, your teams can simply: 

• Log in to a secure, 24/7 cloud-based portal and initiate the file request 
• Respond as directed to automated system prompts if more information is needed
• Move forward with record use when the system provides notice of document intake

Throughout the process, they can log in and see at a glance what steps have been taken, check the status of the records, and escalate any issues or questions. 

By reducing manual touchpoints via platform or retrieval vendor, you can significantly improve your turnaround times while enhancing process visibility and efficiency.

Key Technologies That Enable Automation

Many components and steps enable AI-driven record request automation. These include: 

• Digital request portals – Instead of a phone number or fax number, the requesting party only needs to know their own username and password to log onto a secure portal. The use of digital portals as a one-stop shop for all aspects of request, communication, tracking, delivery, and file storage significantly elevates efficiency and security.

• OCR – Optical character recognition (OCR) converts scanned images of text, locked PDFs, photographs, and handwriting to digital text that can be read, searched, and edited.

• NLP – Natural language processing (NLP) tools employ AI to extract and map clinical data, transforming free text with tokenization and structured data fields that identify medical codes, medications, lab results, and more.

• MRC – NLP paves the way for machine learning comprehension (MRC) systems to provide complex searching, categorization, and analysis.

• FHIR – Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards enable direct connection between live electronic health records (EHRs) and external solutions that can pull and deliver (and update) requested records directly from hundreds of nationwide providers.

• API – Application programming interfaces (APIs) are protocols that enable communication between two separate systems. An API that interfaces with a FHIR system conveys the requests and responses between platforms, supporting security by providing need-to-know-only information and exchanging standardized data fields.

Ensuring Compliance and Security with Automation

Automation is designed to optimize processes, particularly processes that rely on repetitive and time-consuming manual labor, like record retrieval. But the benefits of automation don’t stop there.

Automated record retrieval solutions also support mandates required by major data security and professional ethics frameworks. Here’s how: 

• They leverage technology to support current best practices in data security 
• They limit record access to only those who need it to do their jobs
• They provide a closed environment with audit capacity that tracks all touchpoints

Put simply, working with a digital records request workflow rather than scattershot traditional methods helps secure your data handling, reduce the risk of breaches, and support HIPAA and other regulatory compliance protocols.

Measuring ROI from Automated Retrieval

Automated medical record retrieval also comes with financial benefits. Automation can improve your operational efficiency at scale, helping you meet short- and long-term budget and performance targets. 

By assessing pre- and post-automation external costs, staff hours, request turnaround averages, and closed case/claim averages, you can measure: 

• Time savings and reduced administrative drag expressed by utilization rates
• Reduced labor costs expressed by labor cost and FTE (full-time equivalent) savings
• Faster resolution expressed by case and claim cycle time and resolution time

What to Look for in an Automation Partner

Working with specialized retrieval providers ensures you’re taking full advantage of the latest in retrieval technology and workflow management. As you vet potential medical record retrieval services partners—or review the performance of your current vendor—make sure to discuss: 

• Tracking visibility
• Scalability
• Nationwide provider coverage

Additionally, ask about their billing transparency. Will you be double-billed for document delivery that requires multiple request submissions? How will invoicing and fees reflect the value provided by their delivery mechanics? 

For both costs and services, comparing apples to apples between different vendors ensures you find a reliable partner who aligns with your budget and needs. 

Automate Retrieval to Improve Your Business Performance

There’s no way around it: Automation drives efficiency and accuracy for the medical records retrieval process. Rather than balancing requests and deliveries through manual methods rife with security gaps and delays, law firms and insurance companies can rely on automated, AI-driven record retrieval to improve closure speeds, meet deadlines, reduce administrative overhead, and ensure compliance and security.

If you’re ready to experience the difference, learn how automated medical records retrieval solutions from American Retrieval can streamline your operations. As the national leader in medical record retrieval for both law firms and insurance companies, American Retrieval is committed to providing expedited services through innovative technologies at affordable rates. 

Sources: 

Health IT. National Trends in Hospital and Physician Adoption of Electronic Health Records. https://healthit.gov/data/quickstats/national-trends-hospital-and-physician-adoption-electronic-health-records/

Datagrid. Advanced EHR Integration: Automate Your Medical Records Digitization Process. https://datagrid.com/blog/automate-medical-records-digitization