Examen’s LSP uses Internet for rational’ legal match-up
By DON LONG
Healthcare InfoTech Managing Editor
"Dewey, Cheatem & How." This famous firm appears most often in our favorite lawyer jokes.
But it’s no joke if you’re a healthcare organization faced with rising costs of litigation and even greater obstacles in the regulatory and liability tangle that lies ahead.
Tackling this problem head-on, Examen Health (Sacramento, CA) has launched its Internet-based Legal Service Program (LSP), and has formed an initial four-year partnership with Premier (Chicago), the country’s largest alliance of hospitals and healthcare networks and providers.
If an analogy helps, think of Examen’s program as a sort of professional dating service, a way for plaintiffs/ defendants and attorneys/law firms to find one other and make a match intended to benefit them both.
But this service’s real strength is that it promotes an unemotional match-up, according to Frank Heckman, Premier’s vice president of claims, who is developing a marketing program intended to encourage Premier members to adopt the LSP service.
Heckman contends that healthcare companies most businesses, for that matter too often choose legal council using criteria that are too emotional: "because a certain firm has a lot of customers in a certain geographic area, or because of personal relationships," he told Healthcare InfoTech.
In contrast, organizations using the Examen program can search its site for attorneys that meet their needs and solicit one of them, offering what amounts to a "bid" and specifying the services needed.
Besides soliciting one firm, the company can also select an alternate if the first firm does not reply.
When replying, the legal council agrees to a price and specific services to be rendered.
In effect, Heckman says, the system gives more power to the client but no more advantage. "Both the client and the attorney benefit," he says, "one doesn’t have an advantage over the other. Law firms and clients are able to work with an independent set of technologies in terms of price and scope of the assignment." And this, he argues, allows "rational rather than emotional market forces to work."
Just as big an advantage is the system’s ability to save time, Heckman says, a function of Examen’s use of the Internet. With LSP, clients can strike a deal with a law firm in a matter of hours, compared to what may take several days or even weeks via telephone and fax, or any of the ordinary methods. Additionally, the system’s automated features provide more time for both client and legal council to work on litigation, rather than haggling over prices and filling out and sorting through complex invoices.
And the system wouldn’t work without the Internet, he says. "The Internet not only enables [LSP], in this particular case, the flow of information and decision support mechanisms couldn't happen without the Internet."
And the LSP system doesn't substitute price alone for other important factors, says Catherine MacPherson, executive vice president of Examen, who developed the concept and is overseeing its launch. "Pricing gets the most attention because it's a new concept," she told Healthcare InfoTech. "But if you pick Jones law firm [from the site], you can click to get all sorts of information about them, the law they practice, the partners in the firm, how they practice, how many times they've been selected in the LSP system."
Besides facilitating efficient, rational matches, the system provides for follow-up of cases, MacPherson notes also. The attorneys must submit periodic reports to Examen describing the work they have done for the client, with these reports measured against standardized codes developed by the American Corporate Council Associ ation, she says.
MacPherson says that she developed the concept of LSP after working with and analyzing flat fee programs in other industries. And, adding the Internet allows "a combination of a lot of things going on in the legal industry right now," and is a method for "actualizing the marketplace," she says
She notes that not all cases can be handled through LSP but it fits well with "any kind of litigation that has enough volume that can be standardized, thus making it a good target."
And Premier, she says, was attracted to the concept because it is "a strong advocate of flat fees."
Heckman is working on a marketing program to present LSP to the company’s members, with emphasis on cost containment. He makes the point that LSP is not a beta program, but that its first users will be able to help shape its future, giving their input concerning what features need to be added or abandoned and that its adoption is entirely.
Heckman expresses high confidence in LSP and its future, saying that offering Premier clients any program that didn’t hold costs down would be doing them "great disservice."
"This alliance represents the most effective treatment available for the epidemic of medical malpractice cases in our industry."
In addition to its LSP program, Examen offers automated bill review services, data mining and electronic payment services, with regional offices throughout the country.
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