The chiropractors narrative report is the single most important document for a personal injury patient.
It is the combination of all the clinical aspects of the patients injury to be used for legal and administrative purposes.
I've always said you can have good documentation and a bad narrative report and the doctor will significantly hurt the case.
Or you have have bad documentation and a well formatted narrative report and it will significantly help the case.
The goal for the physician is to have good documentation combined with a well formatted narrative report.
Narrative report formats are essentially like story telling. The doctor should assemble the information in a logical and progressively manner that makes sense and is easy to read and understand. And that includes non medical administrators.
Tell a bad story and you'll get a bad response and writing a narrative report is no different. The doctor should assemble all the patients documentation and logically and sequentially combine it to tell the story of the patients injury from start to finish.
The 3 major parts to a narrative report are the cover letter, the narrative report itself and all the addendums.
The cover letter identifies the parties involved such as who is requesting the narrative report, who is the patient and who has authored the narrative report.
A typical well written narrative report will have 4 major categories. The data section, the story section, the summery and the addendums.
The date category is where all the vital information to the case is logically in order.
The story section is the most important part of the narrative report. The story sections is were the doctor connect all the vital data in a logical and sequential order to tell the story.
The summery section is a quick look at the overall finings of the narrative report.
And the addendum section is all the documents organized orderly to the case.
For the most part a well written narrative report takes the place of a live trial. You should think of the narrative report as the trial on paper.
Because if the case does go to trial it is the data and the format of the narrative report that will be followed.
A well written narrative report is the personal injury attorneys most valuable assist for demanding an injury award from a third party payer like an insurance company.
And so if you are looking to create personal injury attorney referrals you must learn how to write a narrative report. The attorneys income will be based on your ability to tell the story.
And so a well written narrative report is essential for personal injury attorney referrals. And often times they will ask to see one of your narrative reports before they refer you a patient.