In some DUI cases a person may have been transported to the hospital following a crash or motor vehicle accident. The question arises: How do you get those hospital records?
One way is for the attorney to serve a subpoena duces tecum on the hospital, however this is a time consuming and costly process for the client. The other downside to this method is the prosecutor, DMV or court may be able to see the contents of the records as well.
The better way is for the client to simply request the records on their own, directly from the hospital. Here is how this can be done:
Go to the medical records section of the hospital; do not subpoena. The client is advised : DO NOT mention any words like "lawyer; court; litigation; charges," etc. That will tie up the process in months of red tape involving hospital counsel; worse if it's a county or parish hospital. Front office people are trained to refer the patient's request to their lawyers b/c they're so gun shy about medical malpractice or related civil liabilities. The patient simply says, "I'm a diligent sort of person and I like to just keep good records of all my medical affairs in my own files."
There's usually a form involved and they just fill it out and sign it. Sometimes there's a nominal fee and they get the material on a CD-ROM. For Emergency Dept. records, those are in a separate set if the patient was admitted into the regular hospital for an overnight stay, so they have to specify E.D. records. But the medical records section usually handles all the records for the hospital.
No comments:
Post a Comment