The Challenge: Hours Lost to Fax Sheets and Follow-Ups
For plaintiff-side personal injury firms, medical records aren’t just paperwork. They’re the foundation of every case. Records documenting a client’s injuries, treatment history, and medical bills are essential to building a demand, negotiating a settlement, and ultimately getting the outcomes clients deserve.
But for Melissa Laster, Paralegal at Todd East Law Office, obtaining those records had been one of the most draining parts of her job for nearly a decade. Like many personal injury practices, Todd East Law was managing medical record requests entirely in-house, through fax and manual follow-ups.
Every new client meant tracking down fax numbers for each provider, creating a spreadsheet, obtaining signed HIPAA authorization forms, and sending individual fax requests to every facility where a client had been treated. Then came the waiting. And the follow-ups. And sometimes, starting over.
Before ReleasePoint:
“Sometimes, for a new file, it would take hours to get the medical records request and the bills out, depending on how many different places it had to go and how many different fax numbers were involved. And that’s just to request it — not even counting the follow-ups.”
HIPAA guidelines suggest facilities should respond within 10 days. In practice, Melissa says it often took months. And with the volume of cases only growing — and more providers routing records through third-party health information management systems — the manual process was unsustainable.
The stakes are also high. In Tennessee, personal injury cases that don’t settle within a year must go to litigation — meaning depositions, mediation, and significantly higher costs for the client. The faster a firm can assemble complete medical records and bills, the sooner it can build a demand and pursue settlement. Every week of delay carries real consequences.
The Search for a Better Way
Melissa had been looking for a solution for years. She’d noticed that larger law firms were using third-party medical record retrieval services and had been researching options. Like many in the legal field, there’s a perception that if large law firms are using a service, it will be cost-prohibitive for smaller firms. Melissa believes that’s not the case.
“I’ve been Googling places because I see some larger firms use different requesting services. I found ReleasePoint and reached out. I looked at the pricing, talked to our attorney, laid out the pros and cons, and told him we’d get records back a lot quicker. He said, let’s try it.”
The Results: Records Back in Days Instead of Months
The impact was immediate. Within the same day, Melissa submitted her first batch of requests through ReleasePoint. She immediately started telling the other attorneys in her office about the time savings.
Where records had previously taken months to arrive — with constant manual follow-up by Melissa required — many providers now returned records within the same week. Even larger hospital systems, which had historically been the slowest, were coming back within two to three weeks.
And the volume of requests Melissa could handle in a day changed dramatically. What used to require hours of prep work for just a few files could now be completed in a fraction of the time.
“Collecting those records and bills used to take up half my day. Now I can get 20 or 30 requests out in maybe 10 or 20 minutes. That frees me up to keep things flowing on everything else.”
Beyond the operational gains, Melissa also noted that ReleasePoint actively works to ensure providers comply with statutory billing limits — flagging overcharges and negotiating corrections that resulted in some hospital bills coming in under $100, compared to the per-page fees the firm had previously absorbed.
The Broader Impact on the Firm
Todd East Law has two paralegals. The faster Melissa can deliver complete records, the more efficiently the whole pipeline moves.
“If I can get my colleague all the records and bills quickly, it makes her job a lot easier so she can focus on putting together everything we need to get our cases settled.”
The firm also handles interrogatories from defense attorneys, which is a set of formal questions that require the plaintiff’s firm to provide copies of all records and bills. Previously, Melissa would note that requests were pending and provide materials once received, which meant additional follow-ups. With ReleasePoint handling retrieval, those materials are already on hand and ready to send.
Melissa has passed the platform’s contact information along to multiple other attorneys she works with, including both plaintiff and defense-side attorneys, all of whom need medical records for cases.
“I’ve sent information to a lot of different attorneys I know who need medical records and bills quickly. And some attorneys don’t even have assistants — so this is especially easy for them. They don’t have to manage all those fax sheets themselves.”
Key Takeaways for Small and Mid-Sized Law Firms
Todd East Law’s experience illustrates a challenge common to plaintiff-side personal injury firms of all sizes: medical records are essential, the traditional process for obtaining them is slow and resource-intensive, and the stakes of delay are real.
For small firms, especially where staff is stretched and every hour matters, outsourcing medical record retrieval to a specialized vendor like ReleasePoint can meaningfully reduce the administrative burden, accelerate case timelines, and ultimately improve client outcomes.
As Melissa put it:
“To say I’ve been excited about this would be an understatement. Having the ability to request records and bills this quickly truly feels like a game-changer. I’ve waited almost nine years for something that could streamline this part of our work, and I’m genuinely impressed. The amount of stress this has lifted off me is noticeable, and I’m convinced it’s doing wonders for my health, too.”
Ready to See What ReleasePoint Can Do for Your Firm?
If your team is still managing medical record requests through fax, spreadsheets, and manual follow-ups, there’s a better way. ReleasePoint helps personal injury and plaintiff-side law firms of all sizes get records faster, reduce administrative burden, and keep cases moving toward resolution.
Whether you handle 10 cases or 1,000, our platform is built to fit your workflow and your budget, with a team that’s ready to get you up and running the same day.
Get in touch to schedule a demo: sales@releasepoint.com