“This economy is forcing carriers to look at loss adjustment expenses much more carefully and directly. It’s made us very popular,” says Jeff Baker, President of MedSave, the experts in document retrieval, during a recent interview with the Insurance Advocate.

According to Mr. Baker, the national insurance carriers with whom they work are realizing that up to 18% of their legal bills are taken up with retrieval of documents, an area that is ripe for savings.

As MedSave’s President, Bakers’ job is to walk into a carriers’ claims office and, together with staff, analyze legal expenses—which are usually five pages of bills together with summaries of expenses. According to Baker, “We have found that this simple, so-called clerical or administrative function can mean significant dollars in the overall cost of claims which is passed way down the line to consumers in the form of higher premiums. We attack this portion of the process to save carriers 66% on their LAEs and provide to them the safety that comes with knowing their bills are transparent and that they are operating at optimum cost levels.”

MedSave is the brainchild of Mr. Rony Davidoff, who founded the company in 1991, and went headlong into the record retrieval business in 2002. Davidoff Group, which has five synergistic companies in insurance and related areas, is a multi- national that focuses mainly in insurance. Together with Gonen Antebi, CEO of MedSave, and Jeff Baker, who has been president since 2001, Davidoff has created the gold standard in retrieval for both defense firms and insureds, providing the fastest turnaround in the field due to the STAR system (System To Access Records) with IT artificial intelligence as well as a PPO network that has over 700,000 providers and 5,000 plus hospitals. “Our work with many major national and regional carriers and their entire defense panel counsels has cut their turnaround to less than a month compared to the majority of the industry’s three to five month turnaround,” Davidoff said adding, “STAR allows registered clients admission to the secure, passwordprotected section for the entry of requests and retrieval of records. A user-friendly menu simplifies access so that users can easily request new records or download retrieved records. Users may also request additional information about current requests or receive technical assistance. STAR conforms fully to HIPAA and all other government regulations for medical record retrieval.”

“MedSave has a flat fee based format for retrievals, giving great predictability to insurers and to defense firms using our services,” added Gonen Antabi.

Today with 175% growth each year, MedSave and its 162 employees including 100 in its offices in Hauppauge, Long Island, is a company poised for continued growth and the provision of other services in related fields, particularly healthcare.

“While at present our target audiences are insurers and legal firms, we are quickly becoming the court appointed choice in massive torts on the defense side and are preferred by the courts for our speed and pricing predictability in many different kinds of cases. Meanwhile, as the healthcare market changes, MedSave is quickly becoming the preferred provider for HMO’s in their chart pull needs for supplement submission to CMS for under-billed procedures on Medicare,” Mr. Baker stated.

“In eight weeks we will scan, for example, 50,000 records and will be able to provide very accurate, timely information over to our customers. In healthcare, as transparency has become a watch word, we are becoming the preferred provider,” said Baker. Even as other companies have been faltering and scaling back on employees, MedSave has been hiring and has added over 80 new positions just last year.

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*The decision to move into document retrieval was rather a natural one for MedSave, since the company was founded originally to service foreign insurers who insured travelers coming into the United States that were being treated for illnesses or injuries.

“We have two lines of business, record retrieval and bill repricing for international inbound travel medical claims. The decision to get into record retrieval was easy due to our background in insurance and knowledge of pain points and the leverage our PPO network provides us on turnaround time and costs,” said Davidoff.

“The original company which has a network of 700,000 doctors, learned to assemble and send records with lightning speed and at low cost, back and forth overseas, so that insurers would have every possible advantage in the settlement of claims in the United States. This company grew into today’s MedSave,” he explained. According to Jeff Baker, the company’s growth includes at least another 50 people in staff and hopefully 175% growth again next year through its relationships with HMO’s.

Mr. Baker observed, “The timing of the Obama push on healthcare and record sharing is good for us, as we are already in the medical record space and working on the next generation of EMR solutions. Since we customize our IT and our services, we go way past cookie cutter competitors that can not move with our flexibility or speed,” he said. “We aim to continue to be the best in the business in document retrieval and in our new niche areas across the country and we believe we are on our way there,” Mr. Baker concluded.