Nobody ever wants to go to court as a result of a visit to hospital or other medical treatment. No patient wants ever to be put in a position where they feel they’ve been so badly treated that they deserve compensation. No doctor, insurance company, or medical body wants to be accused of such malpractice, resulting in them being forced to pay their patient compensation. That’s why it can be frustrating for everyone involved when these often lengthy processes are drawn out. Luckily, there are a number of ways in which these cases are being sped up. Here’s a look at some of the technology helping to speed up compensation cases for patients who believe they’ve been poorly treated.
Finding medical records
One of the most time-consuming parts of any case is getting hold of the personal medical records of the client. Just a few years ago, if you wanted these legal records, the only way you could access them is to make a request to their local doctor. These requests often mean a lot of waiting around and a lot of follow-up calls to chase the whereabouts of those documents. These days, lawyers can simply fill out a form to request these documents. Companies like Record Retrieval Solutions can complete all of the hard work for you as long as you can provide them with the very basic details like the clients’ name and location.
Sending important documents back and forth
Another process that has slowed down a lot of legal cases in the past is the sending of documents back and forth. Before any trial, a judge may order lawyers from both sides to share any evidence that they have found from their investigations and plan to use in the courtroom. To make sure they arrived securely, these used to have to be delivered by hand by specialist methods. Nowadays, many of these files can simply be shared over the internet. Whilst it would be irresponsible to simply attach these files to any old email, there are a number of well-protected methods that legal teams can send these files to each other.
Researching legal precedents
A lot of lawyers use previous verdicts that are comparable to the case they’re working on to try and convince a judge or a jury to decide in their favor. For example, if a doctor was found guilty of malpractice for a certain problem in one case, any lawyer could argue that if the letter of the law is carried out in the same way that their client should receive the same result. A few years ago, lawyers would have to flick through large libraries of textbooks to find these cases. It’s also highly likely that they simply wouldn’t have instant access to the most recent cases. Luckily these days all of these past court reports have been digitalized, and lawyers simply need to just search for a few keywords to find reports relevant to their case.
Mike Morgan is a health enthusiast and has written several health articles for various health magazines.
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