Civil

Personal injury, malpractice, fraud, and civil rights

Objective, resourceful medical record review for civil matters — with the record work handled so your team can stay on the legal issues.

I understand that the records attorneys receive are often incomplete, disorganized, and time-consuming for the legal team to interpret. I can efficiently review those records, identify important missing pieces, reduce the risk of unpleasant surprises or missed opportunities, and offer clear expert interpretation of the relevant medical issues.

When requested, I can prepare visual chronological timelines with direct Bates-stamp citations, assist with settlement demand packages, help develop interrogatories and deposition or trial questions, and provide expert testimony when appropriate.

Scope of review

Causation and pre-existing conditions: acute trauma vs. degenerative change
Standard of care: protocol breaches, hospital-acquired conditions, surgical complications
Motor vehicle collisions and premises liability: injury severity vs. mechanism
Medical billing and future care cost audits
Expected course of care and prognosis
Visual chronologies with direct Bates-stamp citations

Matter types

Where I focus in civil cases

Personal injury

Assessing the extent of injuries and their relationship to the incident — does the injury reported fit the mechanism of injury? Distinguishing what may be acute from what could be pre-existing or degenerative, and setting out the expected course of care and prognosis.

Medical malpractice & fraud

Expert opinion on whether a healthcare professional deviated from the standard of care, and identification of fraudulent, inflated, or unrelated medical billing. In hospital-related injury, identifying protocol breaches, hospital-acquired conditions, or surgical complications.

Civil rights

Objective medical opinions at the intersection of healthcare and constitutional rights, including systemic neglect, excessive-force injuries, and alleged deliberate indifference to serious medical needs. For example, a person's ability to whisper "I can't breathe" does not rule out a life-threatening respiratory or cardiac injury. I can review the record, identify the clinical support, and help attorneys and clients understand what the evidence does — and does not — show.

Workers' compensation

Assessing injuries that occurred in the workplace and their impact on an individual's short- and long-term health, including expected treatment course and functional consequences.

Cost control

Spotting the gaps before they cost you

If I am not the best final expert to report or testify for a particular issue, my broad clinical background can still move the case most of the way forward while helping control costs. I can complete the initial review, organize the file, easily spot record gaps and inconsistencies, narrow the medical questions, and help locate an appropriate specialist when that would best serve the client. My familiarity with different types of experts, along with local professional connections, can help identify the right fit whenever additional expertise is needed.

An organized medical chronology binder with tabbed dividers

Case Assessment

The time to dig into the medical records isn't the week before the deposition.

Bring me in early and the medical questions get answered while there is still time to use the answers. Email or call to schedule a case assessment — or just to talk through what you're looking at and make those records make sense.

seana@hdmedforensics.com Call 775-742-6533