Scenario 1: It’s the 11th hour and you are finalizing your case notes before trial. You have reviewed each page of the case records several times. Your reports are neatly organized. You are certain you’ve identified the appropriate information to prove your case favorable for the client. You are confident and ready to go.

This seems like an ideal scenario, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, competing cases and a lack of time and staff resources often mean these instances are few and far between, which can ultimately affect the outcome of a case.

Let’s rewind and play the scenario back realistically.

Scenario 2: It’s the 11th hour and you are finalizing your case notes before trial. At this point, you’ve logged many hours reviewing, and re-reviewing, each page of the records. The reports are stacked in a pile on your desk, and you and your team are working late to organize them chronologically by date of treatment. You’re not completely confident you’ve identified the necessary information. You check your list to be sure, and are alarmed to find your team didn’t sufficiently research the records for a specific element relevant to your case. You are feeling tense, and not as prepared as you could be for trial.

What do you do?

Re-review the case records in search of the proverbial needle in the haystack. If your paper records are organized chronologically, and you know the specific dates of treatment in which to look, this may be a realistic option.

An alternative solution is to use modern web-based tools in your record review process to quickly identify the missing information.

By using a record review tool in your initial record review, scenario one above is a more likely reality. Tools such as eSummary by ABI™ allow you to quickly identify critical information using OCR text search across all records. Additionally, tools such as eSummary enable you to easily create custom summaries by highlighting, or copying and pasting text from the electronic records. After creating your summaries, you can organize them in order based on dates of treatment, facility, or document type.

Then, when re-reviewing your records in the 11th hour, you can quickly search through all documents, and summaries to ensure you have the information necessary.

When used to prepare for deposition or trial, record review technology can help to minimize last minute stress on your team, and increase the chances of better case outcomes.

One firm leveraged record review tools to beat a tight deadline before trial.

To learn more, read the case study.