"A Medical Miracle"
Legal Med Ware 2.0 Software Review
Legal Med Ware 2.0 is the latest version of a litigation-support program that every attorney dealing with personal injury cases, medical malpractice or other medically based claims should have in their software arsenal. It also should be considered by every nurse paralegal, nurse consultant, claims adjustor or other legal professional that deals regularly with medical issues.
Although designed primarily as a tool for organizing and summarizing medical records to create medical chronologies by date or by provider, Legal Med Ware does much more. It contains a number of invaluable medical databases that provide instant access to many different kinds of medical information.
It includes a database of medical terms and diseases, which contain definitions, differential diagnoses, causes, symptoms, pathological findings, tests and procedures, complications and other helpful information. There's a drug reference that provides information on side effects and contraindications. A lab value reference database is included that provides a listing of normal lab values and an explanation of the clinical significance of any variation from the norm.
Finally, there's an extensive listing of medical symbols and abbreviations, which provide tremendous help in interpreting medical records. Legal Med Ware gives you an entire library of medical resources located in one place that easily can be integrated into all of your medical file materials.
All of the information contained in the databases can be copied and pasted into a medical record summary, prepared by using Legal Med Ware. However, if you're already a user of other litigation-support software and have a medical database form prepared for use in programs like Summation or Concordance, you easily can cut and paste this information into your existing litigation-support database as well. (After reviewing Legal Med Ware, I intend to modify my own standard medical form in Summation to add additional fields for medical definitions, drug contraindications and diagnostic and lab information.) This will expand your ability to understand and interpret the documents in your existing database because of the wealth of additional information you can add. It also will add additional information in searchable-text form that will provide a powerful supplement to the materials already in your case database.
Legal Med Ware also comes with a report writer that's relatively easy to master. For each type of medical record you might summarize, there are a series of templates available to help organize your data entry. These templates are based on recognized common standards of medical record keeping for various types of records.
If the office visit records you're summarizing are done as SOAP notes, you can select the Office Visit 2 template, and each data entry session for each day is then ready to be entered into Legal Med Ware as a SOAP note just as it is in the chart. These templates are editable, and you can create your own custom templates if you want. You also can choose to use none at all. This last feature is particularly helpful if you combine Legal Med Ware with imaging and OCR software. You can simply cut and paste the applicable entry from an OCR'd record directly into the summary. For data entry purposes, Legal Med Ware also works with voice-activated dictation such as Dragon Naturally-Speaking Preferred 4.0.
The suggested templates also serve as a great checklist to make sure that in your record review, you consider all of the information in the chart that may be of help. If you choose "anesthesia record" you'll receive prompts for a series of entries of significant information to be gleaned from the anesthesia record. If you're not knowledgeable in interpreting such records, the template will guide you through the information you should consider as being important. This is a great tool for training young associates and paralegals who don't yet have experience interpreting medical records. If you run into an unknown term as you prepare your summary, you can jump to the reference databases and select information to insert into the summary text, such as a definition, meaning of a symbol, lab value, drug contraindication and the like.
If you highlight the term in question and select the reference database you want, Legal Med Ware will take you to the information you need automatically. Then, press the copy+paste button, and the information will be inserted [in brackets] into the summary immediately after the highlighted term.
Legal Med Ware also includes an editable checklist of significant case information to which a particular medical fact may be linked in addition to its place in the chronology. Whether a novice attorney or a power user of litigation-support technology, Legal Med Ware is a tool you should definitely add to your arsenal.
PROS
Great comprehensive reference databases, which can be used with
Legal Med Ware or with other commonly used litigation-support programs.
CONS
Awkward editing of entry, may require that it be deleted and fully re-entered.
Lack of a fully-developed sample cases.
VERDICT
A must-have for any law firm dealing with medical issues.
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Copyright 2000 James Publishing Inc.
Reprinted with permission from Law Office Computing magazine
