In life insurance, disability claims, workers’ comp, and legal cases, one principle holds true across the board: turnaround time drives outcomes.
But even with the most sophisticated teams, a single bottleneck in the medical records process can derail operations: delaying decisions, frustrating policyholders, applicants, or claimants, and driving up costs.
The good news: nearly every bottleneck is fixable with the right technology, processes, and partnership.
ReleasePoint supports organizations processing thousands of medical record requests every month. We’ve seen the same bottlenecks appear across industries — and we’ve built workflow tools to address them head-on.
1. Third-Party Retrieval Delays
The Challenge
About 30% of medical record requests don’t go directly to providers. Often, they route through third-party Release of Information (ROI) vendors like Datavant (formerly Ciox), MRO, or Verisma.
These vendors play a pivotal role in streamlining medical record retrieval by reducing the need to contact individual providers directly. However, to fully capitalize on this advantage, you need to work with a medical record retrieval company that has established, streamlined integrations with these third-party ROI vendors. Without strong relationships and direct connections, quality and speed can suffer.
How ReleasePoint Addresses It
ReleasePoint is the largest requester of medical records in the U.S. market, which gives us something smaller providers simply can’t match: direct connections with the major third-party ROI vendors.
“The two largest third-party ROI companies have told us we’re their largest requester of records,” says Andrew Simpson, Assistant Vice President & Senior Account Executive for Life and Disability Accounts at ReleasePoint. “That volume encourages them to work closely with us and create streamlined connections. As a result, we can often bypass the hospital or medical provider and work directly with the ROI vendors, which is a faster and more efficient retrieval process.”
Our direct third-party connections reduce turnaround times significantly, and the request management portal (RPNet) automatically tracks where requests are routed (direct vs. third party), so clients have full transparency into their orders.
2. Rejected or Missing Authorizations
The Challenge
Every facility requires a HIPAA-compliant authorization before releasing medical records. But up to 10% of facilities require their own facility-specific authorization forms instead of accepting standard ones.
When an authorization gets rejected—whether due to incorrect birthdates, outdated forms, or facility-specific requirements—the entire request stalls until the issue is resolved.
How ReleasePoint Addresses It
ReleasePoint has workflows in place to address every potential step where special authorization bottlenecks can occur:
- Pre-identification: Our business intelligence system automatically flags facilities that require special authorizations before we even submit the request.
- Annotated forms: We don’t just send clients a blank facility form to fill out and hope for completeness and accuracy. We annotate the forms with clear instructions so all clients need to do is sign.
- Instant distribution: When a facility-specific authorization is needed, we automatically send the form and offer DocuSign for rapid completion — keeping requests moving without back-and-forth emails.
- Flexible routing: We send authorization forms to whoever the client designates—whether that’s the insurance company itself, the claimant, or the applicant.
- Actionable insights: Through RPNet and / or customer reporting, Releasepoint can provide trends in rejected authorizations, helping clients improve upstream processes and reduce repeat errors.
“Through RPNet, special authorizations are transparent and actionable. No more wondering where a request stands or why retrieval is taking longer than expected,” says Kimberly Reece, Client Experience Executive.
3. Suspend Notices
The Challenge
Suspend notices are one of the biggest bottlenecks in medical record retrieval. They occur when a request can’t move forward without client action, whether that’s due to incomplete provider details, fee approvals, wrong dates of service, incorrect date of birth, or missing authorization information.
Suspend notices create delays, and if they sit unresolved for 90 to 120 days, requests get canceled—often with fees attached. No records, wasted time, wasted money.
How ReleasePoint Addresses It
We don’t just notify clients when a request is suspended. We help them understand why it’s happening and what they can do about it:
- Immediate notification: When a provider issues a suspend notice, we immediately notify the client with a clear explanation of what’s needed to move forward.
- Categorized tracking: RPNet categorizes suspend reasons so clients can see patterns. For example, if 40% of suspends are due to missing provider details, the client can proactively fix that gap in their intake process.
- Actionable intelligence: Clients can use the data and trends we provide to improve internal efficiency, reduce cancellation rates, and ultimately save money.
“We categorize suspend reasons so clients can see where and why cases are stalling and take proactive steps to reduce turnaround times,” says Cheryl Zatopek, Director of Client Experience at ReleasePoint. “We don’t just deliver records. We deliver intelligence. The goal is to help our clients run their operations better, with the right information at the right time.”
4. Incomplete or Inconsistent Records
The Challenge
Whether it’s EHR data or traditional APS requests, record sets often arrive missing:
- Key dates of service
- Required treatment notes
- Discharge summaries
- Legible, complete documentation
When records are incomplete, teams are forced into additional follow-up cycles, which can add days or weeks to a case.
How ReleasePoint Addresses It
ReleasePoint applies a rigorous quality assurance process to every set of records to reduce these types of operational delays, including:
- Automated QA checks: Before delivery, we verify that records include the requested dates of service, document quality is legible, and any special attention items are present (e.g., discharge summaries, progress notes, treatment records).
- Automatic pivots: If EHR data is insufficient, we automatically initiate APS retrieval: no new ticket required from the client. This ensures teams always receive complete, usable information without extra steps.
- Proactive follow-up: If items are missing, we go back to the provider on our dime to retrieve them before delivering records to the client.
“We have the ability for clients to add special attention items to their requests,” Simpson explains. “They may say, ‘Must include discharge summary, progress notes, and treatment records.’ If those are missing, we’ll proactively go back to the provider to get them. It’s part of our quality control process for every set of records.”
5. Lengthy Records Without Context
The Challenge
Massive APS or EHR files can easily run hundreds of pages. Underwriters and claims teams must comb through them manually, looking for discrete data elements—diagnoses, pre-existing conditions, medication histories, treatment timelines—to make their decisions.
This process is time-consuming, prone to human error, and even frustrating for teams working under tight deadlines.
How ReleasePoint Addresses It
RP Insights, ReleasePoint’s AI-powered medical record summary, transforms how teams interact with lengthy medical records.
Underwriters and claims professionals receive structured summaries that surface critical information—key diagnoses, risk indicators, pre-existing conditions, and treatment histories. Each summary includes hyperlinks and bookmarks that allow users to quickly navigate to the relevant sections of the full record for validation.
“When a provider or an insurance carrier gets a large record, it’s going to take their team quite a bit of time to review,” Simpson says. “The whole point of RP Insights is to surface critical information and give them a guide to the records, so they can quickly find what they need to make the decision and then validate it by navigating to the record.”
The result? Faster reviews, greater accuracy, and more confident decision-making.
Want to eliminate bottlenecks in your own workflow?
Across carriers and industries, the same challenges keep surfacing. What separates high-performing organizations is whether they treat these issues as unavoidable or solvable.
At ReleasePoint, our entire platform is built to remove friction:
- Direct third-party connections
- Streamlined authorization workflows
- Actionable suspend analytics
- Rigorous QA for every record
- AI-powered insights that reduce review time
Whether you’re modernizing legacy processes or scaling high-volume operations, we help teams move faster, with greater accuracy — and dramatically fewer bottlenecks.
Ready to see how ReleasePoint can improve your medical record workflows? Email: sales@releasepoint.com