Designed to help health insurance carriers complete medical chart risk adjustment before submission, MediConnect Global, Inc. (www.mediconnect.net ) today announced its patented medical record retrieval service is now available to Medicare Advantage Plans. The service allows plans to retrieve large volumes of medical charts quickly and economically to ensure complete and accurate diagnosis coding which dictates proper reimbursement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

“MediConnect provides carriers with a single source solution for retrieving and digitizing mass volumes of medical records from any or all of their providers,” said Amy Rees Anderson, MediConnect CEO. “Retrieving these records allows them to perform risk adjustment review either before submitting to Medicare for reimbursement or after the initial submission in order to appeal any underpaid reimbursements. A Medicare Advantage plan that does not retrieve and review these records is likely to leave significant money on the table in their reimbursements from CMS.”

Carriers simply provide MediConnect with a list of patients, and patient providers, whose records need to be retrieved. MediConnect then works directly with healthcare providers and clinics to retrieve and digitize all medical charts. MediConnect organizes all record requests by medical group (or individual providers), validates the medical group and provider contact data (as needed), and removes duplicate requests if any.

MediConnect then indexes the records, hosts the digitized record copies online, and transmits the records to the Medicare Advantage plan to ensure complete and accurate diagnosis coding is performed for submission to CMS. This allows carriers to be properly reimbursed for each plan member.

MediConnect’s patented technology and processes are streamlined and time-proven with national and global reach, and can scale up or down quickly depending on the needs of each carrier. The system is able to complete the retrieval of a high percentage of medical records for multiple purposes fast and inexpensively.

The Supreme Court Wednesday sided with medical device manufacturers in an 8 to 1 ruling protecting medical device manufacturers “that have passed the most rigorous federal review standards from lawsuits by consumers who allege that the devices caused them harm.”

This decision could make it more difficult for product liability litigation, but it is important to remember that the decision only applies to Class III medical devices, which is based on the highest level of FDA scrutiny. The decision also refers to medical devices approved by the FDA and does not include drugs.

In January, we pointed out that a New England Journal of Medicine report concluded that drug-eluting stents were not associated with an increased risk of death, and that the FDA a month before that said they expected to issue new testing requirements for drug-coated stents. (See Drug-coated Stents Considered Safe)

Devices and drugs, such as these stents, may not be covered by this decision unless they fall within the Class III medical device category.

Washington Post

It was just a little more than a month ago the Food and Drug Administration reacted to the concerns expressed by researchers that drug-coated stents could possibly cause complications including blood clots years after implementation. They did this by stating that they expected to issue new testing requirements for drug-coated stents.

Now, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that the use of drug-eluting stents was not associated with an increased risk of death and supports their use for off-label indications.

About half of stents currently placed in heart patients in the United States are used “off-label” –for purposes not officially approved by the FDA. The earlier studies suggested drug-coated stents used off-label posed a small risk and warranted further examination by the FDA.

Narrowed coronary arteries deliver blood and oxygen to the heart muscle. To enlarge the artery, doctors install a wire mesh stent. The stent can cause scar tissue that again narrows the artery. Stents coated with an anti-inflammatory drug slows scar tissue growth and the narrowing of the arteries it causes.

One of the most frustrating and time-consuming tasks legal professionals face when working on malpractice, product liability, personal injury, workers compensation, or other medical-related legal cases is collecting, organizing and analyzing their clients’ personal medical records, according to a new white paper published by MediConnect Global, Inc.

According to Strategies and Best Practices in Medical Record Retrieval, co-written by Thomas A. Schultz, a partner for Lopez, Hodes, Restaino, Milman & Skikos of Newport Beach, Calif., law firms must use patient medical records more than they ever have in the past for use in litigation.

“Initially it doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult to obtain medical records for clients,” said Schultz. “But, there are so many things to remember and sequences to go through that one little mistake can delay record retrieval significantly and delay litigation in important cases. This white paper will walk legal professionals through the most critical and strategic steps to obtaining client medical records—and ultimately saving them time and costs.”

The white paper outlines 14 strategic ways law firms can improve the medical record retrieval process making it easier to build and win profitable cases.

Strategies and Best Practices in Medical Record Retrieval is available at the MediConnect Global Web site. www.mediconnect.net

Getting medical records into your organizations can be a trying process—it takes time, costs money, and requires great effort in working with healthcare providers to release the records you need. The more you need, the more difficult it becomes.

At MediConnect Global we’re experts at medical records — that is our focus, our business and no body knows more about them then we do. The purpose of this blog is to take some of the mystery out of our process of obtaining medical records, provide strategic litigation support when using medical records, help increase new policies for insurers, and basically share our expertise and perspectives on what we see that can help us help you.

Our blog is a place where you can get on-going information, ideas and strategies on how you can better use and obtain medical records for your organizations. Posts written by our executives and staff will provide information, tips, techniques, and services that will benefit you. We’ll also cover other important topics such as:

• Strategies and best practices in medical record retrieval
• Universal authorization
• Electronic medical records
• Digitized signatures

Our desire is to create a blog that encourages dialog and discussion about medical records, which means we want to hear from you! Let us know by your comments how you’ve overcome issues in obtaining medical records, your strategies, and what successes you’ve had with medical records. We hope you find the blog useful and come back often.