| Bar Bulletin |
August,
2003 |
| MSBA News |
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Health Care Law and The
Legal Nurse Consultant
By
Patricia A. Hughes
Many law firms
litigating cases of medical negligence and personal injury are utilizing
the skills of legal nurse consultants. The legal nurse consultant is
employed to do the initial intake with clients, obtain and organize
medical records, perform a thorough record review, identify standard of
care issues, provide pertinent literature, talk with medical experts and
write a concise report of their findings. This enables the attorney to
determine whether a case is worth pursuing by understanding all of the
issues related to negligence, causation and damages. This service allows
the attorneys to use their time and financial resources wisely and stay
focused on what they do best: litigate.
One of the most
frustrating aspects of pursuing medically related cases is sifting through
volumes of medical records in the attempt to understand all of the
pertinent issues. This is a time-intensive undertaking, and many attorneys
have found that outsourcing this work to a legal nurse consultant can help
contain costs as nurses charge far less for their services than physician
experts. The average physician expert charges $250 to $350 per hour to
review records and give a medical opinion. A nurse consultant charges $75
to $125 per hour. This cost savings can translate into thousands of
dollars a year.
Legal nurse
consultants are Bachelors’- or Masters’- prepared nurses. They understand
how the health care system works and can make sense of complex medical
issues, as well as discuss medical issues clearly with experts. They have
a keen understanding of the law as it pertains to medicine and can
translate the medical issues into legal theories.
Case
Discussion
A prospective new
client calls an attorney, telling the story of a 35-year-old man with
three small children who entered the hospital for minor routine surgery.
The patient awoke from anesthesia in the ICU with renal failure and a new
uncontrollable seizure disorder. He required mechanical ventilation, as he
was unable to breathe on his own. The family strongly felt malpractice had
occurred. The man recovered but spent months in rehabilitation. He is
unable to provide for his family and has been declared completely disabled
due to injuries suffered. Based on the damages, the attorney determines
this case is worth exploring. He requests the medical records and 1,500
pages arrive. He sifts through the records only to realize the complexity
is staggering. He sends the records to a physician expert. The expert
takes 10 hours to organize the records and review the medicine. He charges
the attorney $300 per hour for his opinion, totaling $3,000. Sound
familiar?
If a legal nurse
consultant were utilized in this case, the records would be organized with
tabs and indexes, medical negligence, if present, would be isolated,
literature regarding standard of care obtained and an opinion concisely
written. This would most likely take eight hours at a charge of $100 per
hour, totaling $800. The nurse would isolate the records that pertain to
the negligence, limiting the size of records the physician expert would
have to review. This would dramatically reduce the cost. The legal nurse
consultant can guide the attorney toward the best specialist for this
review. The attorney would contain costs, have a cleaner work product and
a well-organized case prior to filing. Most legal nurse consultants stay
involved throughout litigation to act as medical resources based on the
needs of the attorney and the demands of the case.
How
Does an Attorney Find a Good Legal Nurse Consultant?
One finds a legal
nurse consultant the same way that one finds a medical expert: by talking
to other lawyers. Attorneys who work predominantly in the medical arena
are a good referral source. Also, contacting any of the national
organizations for legal nurse consulting can point you in the right
direction.
Pursuing medically
focused litigation can be lucrative but costly and time-consuming.
Collaborating with a legal nurse consultant can streamline a case from a
perspective of knowledge, cost and time.
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