CASE STUDY – The Stucky Firm
Arctrieval’s Impact on a Growing PI Firm
“If I had to give up all my IT systems except one, I’d keep Arctrieval because it has the biggest impact on my practice,” Nathan Stuckey
Year Founded: 2018
Location: Springfield, OH
Practice Areas: Personal Injury
thestuckeyfirm.com
Nathan Stuckey founded The Stuckey Firm, LLC, leading a talented team of attorneys and legal professionals with over thirty years of combined experience. The team is dedicated to helping people reclaim their future.
Khristeene Richards is a vital member of the firm. She serves as the office manager and lead paralegal, overseeing the daily office operations.
I like using Arctrieval’s software because the requests were still coming from us organically but through an automated process. We entered a provider into our account once, and we could make as many requests as needed to that same provider for however many clients. I could issue a new request in minutes and completely control the process.
– Khristeene Richards
The Challenge
The Stuckey Firm identified the longstanding delay in obtaining medical and billing records as a critical bottleneck hindering its growth. The wait time affected case timelines, and the financial burden of traditional record retrieval methods became untenable. Arctrieval, with its innovative web-based software, effectively addressed both challenges, transforming the record retrieval process into a faster, straightforward, and less costly task.
Before Arctrieval, Khristeene Richards, the office manager and lead paralegal, faced an arduous and time-consuming process to get records. The typical client saw five to seven medical providers requiring her to send out ten to twelve requests for bills and records for each case.
Khristeene recalled, “It would take me all day to draft requests and letters to each provider and put them in the mail. Then, I had to constantly call hospitals and doctors to try to get records. Many times, we had to send demand letters before receiving the records. I often discovered we were missing 50% of the records Iinitially requested.”
The Solution
When Mr. Stuckey presented Arctrieval to Khristeene, she was skeptical. Having previously used traditional third-party retrieval services, she found them cumbersome, less reliable, and more costly than managing the process in-house. With Arctrieval, the firm discovered a software tool that fundamentally improved how it requests and tracks medical and billing records. The software provides complete control over the record retrieval process, alleviating their frustrations.
Additionally, the firm uses Arctrieval’s software to monitor the request lifecycle, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.
The Result
The Stuckey Firm achieved a remarkable 70% reduction in the turnaround time for medical and billing records. Two immediate benefits to the firm and client were:
- Better demand letters were issued based on complete case information and medical history.
- Reducing the time by months to resolve the client’s case.
Impact on Growth
The Stuckey Firm is experiencing solid growth, expanding from one to three offices and adding more attorneys and support staff. Now, it is grappling with a new challenge: the overcrowding of its current office spaces and training new people. Arctrieval, in partnership with Filevine, its case management software, is playing an essential role in overcoming this challenge by allowing the firm to incorporate remote employees into its operations.
According to Khrsteene, the fast-paced nature of personal injury law is stressful enough, but the complexity of requesting and handling medical and billing records adds to the pressure. Anything that eliminates some of that stress is important to employees. Arctrieval’s intuitive and user-friendly design fosters confidence and reduces anxiety.
Khristeene shared a situation where she trained a new paralegal in a satellite office who was new to personal injury law. According to Khristeene, the new employee was very concerned about the learning curve for ordering medical records. She states, “When she saw how simple it was because of Arctrieval, she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I was so worried about.’”
Requesting, organizing, and analyzing medical and billing records can be a nightmare for personal injury firms. However, as The Stuckey Firm’s experience shows, the right productivity tool will improve morale, generate efficiency, move cases forward faster, and, most importantly, improve client outcomes.