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Is Your Legal Nurse Consulting Business Ready to Go Paperless?

Remember when the buzzword of the day was the “paperless office?” All Certified Legal Nurse Consultants imagined online collaboration or marking up of electronic documents through Adobe® Acrobat®’s “Sticky Notes,” Microsoft® Word’s “Track Changes,” Google Docs or, if you had the technology, a SharePoint server.

Well, just like the electronic medical record, we all know how well that works. While there are advantages to being paperless, there are days paper still rules in my office. Maybe it’s my training as an educator and attorney, but I would never think of approving a contract or the next edition of the Core Curriculum for Legal Nurse Consulting® textbook by proofing it on-screen. If a document is in excess of one or two pages, proofing it only on-screen can produce a fount of errors.

During the initial creation of a document we often go into our conference room, throw someone’s first draft up onto one of the big screens and collaborate together in real time. Doing it this way guarantees that by the end of our meeting we’ll have hammered out a document that we’re all pretty happy with. But we’re not done yet, and this is when the paper trail starts in earnest as that newly created document routes for additional editing, corrections and “second thoughts.” Sometimes I’m ashamed at how much paper we use in the process, so much so that I’m thinking about bestowing my director of education with a “Golden Lorax Award ” for tree-mulching and rain forest deforestation.

You’re probably not as bad as me, but I imagine that you rely on your fair share of paper. I know many Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who are able to screen medical-related cases on-screen, but print a copy of all their reports for proofing and editing before they submit them to their attorney-clients. Proofing a printed copy can save your legal nurse consulting business from the potential disaster of missing important errors.

One day we really will get to a truly paperless office. I just haven’t mastered it yet. How about you? Is your legal nurse consulting business ready to go paperless?

I’m Just Askin’

P.S. Comment and share your thoughts on paperless offices.

One thought on “Is Your Legal Nurse Consulting Business Ready to Go Paperless?

  1. I converted my business to paperless last year and it has been awesome! At first, I thought that reviewing records online would be aggravating, but I love it. I use Dropbox so I can access my records from anywhere and on any device. Also helpful is Acrobat Pro because I can cut and paste from records to do chronologies, etc., or I can highlight important facts to access later. When I get a new case, I ask for electronic records in the form of a disc or I request them sent to me via a file share system. It has worked great! My office remains a mess but that is from years of paper trails that I am trying to get scanned in.

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*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.

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