United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

I just wanted everyone to know that when an attorney requests your files from your hospital and clinic, that hospital and clinic assumes that you may sue. This is the first sign that the other side are getting ready. It names the law firm that requests your file and sometimes "the other side" calls them. I was not aware this yet I can see this. Anyone else know about this?

I don't find it terribly surprising. It kind of makes sense to me, yet the idea of sometimes calling doesn't seem right, especially if it is that early on.

The biggest mistake I made was allowing my attorny to request records b/f the insurance company, now the hospital is taking their sweet time and bills are piling up b/c of non pymnt by insurance! Also- i think that the records depts, may call the dr and tip them off too -

I don't believe this to be true in all cases. Ironically, I work for several attorney's and request medical records nearly everyday. I have never run into a problem were the Hospital is calling the defense to warn them. The people who copy records and bills have so much more to do than call and tattle. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I think that 99.9% of the time, it doesn't happen like that.

Of course when you live in a small town they do call the doc and let them know.

I'm sure this does happen sometimes. It sounds logical to me. I don't know what would be wrong with that though. If you have an attorney request your records, doesn't that mean that you're at least considering filing a lawsuit anyway? An alternative, if you don't want them to suspect you of filing a lawsuit is to request a copy of the records yourself. I requested a copy of the birth records myself b/c we had an appt. with a Ped. Neuro. who wanted to see the birth records. Initially, I just used my copy for a couple attorneys to review. Eventually, when we hired an attny, they requested the records and their set was more comprehensive than mine -- mainly because theirs included the fetal monitoring strip and mine did not (the hospital records dept told me that if I wanted a copy of the fetal monitoring strip it would be very expensive so I opted to not get them). Anyway, just thought I'd post the alternative available rather than having an attny request the records (at least initially).

I never thought about this until now but about 2 weeks after we requested the files we got a phone call from a clinic asking if we would like to participate in a lawsuit. I said no and then they asked if we already had started a lawsuit I just hung up but thought it no big deal. You never know though. Thanks for the info.

My attorney called and told me this. However, it made them look bad illegally going into my file with out my wriiten concent.