PI Brief Update

RTA Portal Claims - One Profitable Way to Beat the MOJ Blues! - Sharon Lister, inJur

19/03/13. April 2013 is fast approaching; personal injury firms are looking for ways to preserve their profitability. 

Sharon Lister explains how instructing medical experts via your own medico-legal agency could be just what you need to say in business. She also discusses just how easy it is in this day and age using a resource such as inAge.

It seems that PI law firms risk losing a significant proportion of their income and many firms are scratching around looking for ways to stay in business. One way that enables firms to legitimately earn an additional stream of income is for them to use their own agency to instruct medical experts.

Here are the top 3 most frequently asked questions by solicitors:-

“Can this really be SRA compliant?”

Who else is doing it? (comfort in numbers)

“How do I do it?”

Let’s first take a look at whether your current way of instructing medical experts would stand up to SRA scrutiny?

Instructing experts for your clients using a third party commercial middleman agency??
First, can firms be sure that by devolving responsibility to a commercial agency, they are not putting the agency’s desire for profits before the clients’ needs? If they can’t demonstrate to the SRA what processes they have put in place to ensure this is not the case they could be in breach of SRA regulations. Further, those firms being dictated to by their referrer of claims as to which agency they need to instruct should seriously examine whether they fall foul of the SRA rules when working in this way.

Oh we don’t use agencies, we prefer to instruct experts directly?

Is this really in the best interest of your clients? Can you be sure that you are using enough of today’s resources and doing all that would be expected of you to find the best expert for your client and not one that you have instructed for your own convenience?

2011 SRA Rules are all about you showing that you have acted in your clients’ best interest.

Can you show that you have picked the closest most suitable expert for your client and not just the one you know of and have dealt with previously and who is near enough? For example, would there have been a more appropriate expert nearer if they had taken the care to find an alternative?

Firms may be sitting back thinking that this is the most compliant way to instruct experts, but think again!.

Today’s caseload often spreads across the UK, necessitating access to nationwide list of experts from a wide range of disciplines. In addition, firms may have no choice but to instruct an expert they have no prior knowledge of.

The Future of Medico-legal Instructions is here

By instructing experts using their own in-house medico-legal agency, claimant-focused PI firms can retain control of their medico legal instructions, make their own decisions with regard to expert-sourcing and provide an income stream that could make all the difference as to whether they stay in business or not.

However setting up and instructing experts via an in-house medico-agency is a tall order especially if it is to give consideration to Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) compliance, which of course is paramount for solicitor practices.

There a lot of things to take account of and fortunately for firms these have already been considered by inJur’s inAge service, which was designed to facilitate the direct instruction of experts and was especially created for solicitors' own medico-legal agencies.

Solicitors can get to work instantly by instructing their own cloud agency on the inJur portal. Everything a medico-legal agency could need is setup in the cloud. There is no set up time or costs for Solicitors to start using inAge. It is simple, quick and easy to use.

Built in SRA Compliance

There are many ways in which Inage provides built in SRA compliance.

All inAge users get the chance to rate experts and this continuous feedback from current users eventually leads to the best experts receiving accreditation. Parts of the accreditation process take account of the client care provided to the solicitors’ clients by the expert. Such things as the length of the appointment given and the quality of the consulting rooms etc are all considered in the feedback from the clients. Injur has awarded accreditation to 45 medical experts and many more are being monitored for accreditation at any one time.

Accredited Experts

Injur is powered by a database of over 9000 medical expert witnesses covering all disciplines across the UK. inJur gets feedback on regularly instructed experts and accredit those that merit it. These are flagged up on the portal as ‘tried and trusted’ for the benefit of all users so that they can ensure a better experience for their clients.

When we built the inJur system it was of primary importance to us that it should facilitate solicitors being able to offer a superior service to their clients at the same time as being able to create an extra source of income.

The portal’s built in considerations for client care include making sure the client can attend the most convenient appointment with the most appropriate expert for their individual needs. This takes account of language, cultural, religious and gender requirements as well as location.

It is these considerations that are automatically provided for by the portal that contribute to excellent SRA compliance for solicitors.

Setting up an in-house agency is legitimate if the correct procedures are in place. However attending a course is not a prerequisite to going down this path as inAge provides you with such an easy and simple way forward and the portal automatically provides the SRA compliance you need.

Cash flow and having to pay experts ahead of claims settling is often a concern for solicitor firms looking to set up their own agency. Having a cloud agency on inJur enables the in-house agency to tap into and benefit from the aggregate booking of instructions. They profit from the lower fees and longer payment terms that experts can offer inJur as a result of this .The icing on the cake though is the SRA complete peace of mind afforded to solicitor practices who instruct their own cloud agency on the inJur portal.

Sharon Lister is CEO of inJur (www.injur.co.uk) and founder of the
Association of In-house Medico-Legal Agencies (www.aimla.co.uk)

Image ©iStockphoto.com/dra_schwartz