Why Is ChartSquad So Important For People Working With Attorneys?

My name is Melanie Carpenter. I'm an attorney and also one of the founders of ChartSquad. ChartSquad is a company that retrieves medical records, but we are essentially champions of justice. We seek to educate medical providers and the general community/patients across the country as to their rights to access their own health information.

I was a new attorney, a young litigator. Everything that I did in my practice revolved around accessing these medical records. Righting the wrong requires showing the injuries. So, if a set of medical records is $10,000, I am a new attorney and I don't have that kind of money. I was very much struggling with this, researching federal laws, state laws, trying to come up with some way to require a release of this information.

I empowered my own clients to go get their own records. That didn't work out very well. At the end of the day, these are case costs. These are costs coming out of my client's pocket. Long story short, I so happened to meet this man who had 25 years of experience in the medical record industry. He explained to me that their response to an attorney request to HIPAA authorization is discretionary.

Not to mention the fact that they are allowed to charge these attorneys whatever they so choose. And we're supposed to be writing a wrong. And really all we're doing is making somebody else richer. And what you're doing is you're putting everybody in a terrible situation here. So, we put our brains together, my legal brain, his medical record experience, and we created this company.

What we leverage is federal law. We are able to use the law as it's written, black and white. You must respond to a patient access request for records. I say, “Give me my records”. And they say, “No”, that's a violation of federal law. Because if you don't have your health information, then you don't know about your own health. And your health is your life!

Using a service like ChartSquad to help your own client get their own records allows you the opportunity to be that fiduciary and to maintain those lower costs so that at the end of the day, everybody walks away somewhat status quo. You know, you're putting them in a better position. So ChartSquad’s just pushing and pushing it, pushing it, educating.

Let's make it easier. Not only is it less expensive, but it's instant. And, also, it's a service you can trust.