27,111
Requests analyzed across a seven-month sample
270,150
PROCESSING NOTES READ, LINE BY LINE
61
OF REQUESTS RUN BY THE DATAVANT FAMILY
321
FALSE "NO RECORDS" ANSWERS PROVEN WRONG
This is a sample analytics case study, one firm's complete retrieval operation, 27,111 requests and 270,150 processing notes over seven months, traced to its source. Nothing here is modeled or estimated; it is the operating record, read line by line. A request can fail on the way in, on the way through, or at the provider, and a panel making a vendor decision deserves to know which, and who is telling them.
Request intake
Incomplete or inaccurate requests create risk, so we check every request before it goes out. Only 334 requests, about 1.2%, carried a real input issue, caught and corrected before it cost claim time.
EXHIBIT 1 · FIRM-SIDE INPUT ISSUES CAUGHT
334 requests, 1.2% of the book
Authorization or attestation detail gap
132
Wrong or mismatched patient detail
131
Wrong facility, entity, or routing target
81
Source identification
The right source isn't always the obvious one. About one in four requests, 6,193 of 27,111, ran through a release-of-information copy service rather than the provider directly. A single corporate parent, Datavant, already controls most of the platform layer a panel's retrieval depends on.
EXHIBIT 1 · REQUESTS ROUTED, BY NAMED PLATFORM
Green marks the Datavant-owned family (Ciox, Datavant, ChartSwap), 61% of every named-platform request in this book.
CONSOLIDATION DIDN'T BUY RELIABILITY
37%
DATAVANT TROUBLE RATE
36%
CHARTSWAP TROUBLE RATE
Better than one in three requests, either way. Two independents scored worse. The family was no better for its scale.
Platform routing
Breaks in process create silent failure. A bounce is the signature move: the platform refuses to route a request it should handle and sends the requester in a circle. It happened on 1,057 requests, none about whether records exist, all about handling.
EXHIBIT 3 · COPY SERVICE PROCESS FAILURES
Lost the request on their own system
218
Bounced it back: "we don't handle this"
113
Demanded prepayment before any work
38
Cancelled as unable to fulfill
3
Sent an incorrect redirect
1
Quality & delivery
Issues surface late, when they cost more. A "no records" answer is not neutral: it closes a line of inquiry and lets a reserve assumption drop. Of 2,570 received, we challenged 805 with proof of treatment or a forced second search. At least 321 came back with records that existed all along, more than seven in ten of them on a Datavant-owned platform.
PROBLEMS TRIPLE THE WAIT
20
MEDIAN DAYS CLEAN REQUEST
60
MEDIAN DAYS THIRD PARTY FUMBLED IT
+40 business days, roughly eight calendar weeks, on the same record, while the claim behind it stayed open.
Financial impact
Hidden failures cascade into real cost. Providers that refuse any electronic signature forced a re-sign on 635 requests, a provider policy, predictable and fixable with the right intake routing. Provider performance otherwise varies enormously: an 82-business-day median at one facility against a 10-day median at another is a routing decision a claims team can make on evidence.
| What went wrong | The Takeaway | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Platform bounced or misrouted (1,057 reqs.) | Resent free, part of the original fee | absorbed |
| False "no records" (321 reqs.) | Challenged and overturned | claim files saved |
| Wet-ink signature rule (635 reqs.) | Routed and escalated at intake | delay avoided |
| 12,648 resubmissions, total | Never billed back to the client | $198K–$379K |
What went wrong
Cancelled after the work was done
The fix
Confirm the case is active before sending
Recovered
$207K
What went wrong
Sent to the wrong provider or place
The fix
Verify provider and location at intake
Recovered
$112K
What went wrong
Duplicate and double-billed requests
The fix
One request per matter, one channel
Recovered
$47K
What went wrong
Wrong name, date of birth, or dates
The fix
A 30-second check before submitting
Recovered
$45k
What went wrong
Recoverable each period
The fix
Most of this repeats until the process changes
Recovered
~$362K
Every number in this report depends on one thing: the party doing the measuring has no stake in what is being measured. In a panel decision, that is not a detail. It is the whole question.
THE LAYER NOBODY AUDITS
Why ownership decides who can measure this
The party best positioned to score this layer owns none of it, and competes with none of it.
Independent, reads the whole record
-
Reports its own platform's failures
Nothing to protect, nothing to flatter
-
Scores the firm, provider, and platform
The same hand, the same standard
-
Surfaces the false "no records"
Least likely to find it, best positioned to catch it
-
Refreshed scorecards, every quarter
Every platform the panel touches
Platform-owned vendor
-
Bounces and losses invisible outside its system
A self-serve portal never looks inside its own process
-
Evaluates within its own corporate ecosystem
Ontellus, Ciox, ChartSwap, Datavant: one family
-
No incentive to surface its own trouble rate
Reporting naturally favors its own operations
-
One slice of the path, never the whole record
A platform never reports its own mistakes
A framework for evaluating retrieval
The case generalizes into scorecards any panel can run on its own book, for a single client or the whole book of business.
FIRM-SIDE QUALITY
Caught before it costs claim time
Input issues the firm can act on once someone shows them.
COPY-SERVICE SCORECARDS
Trouble rate, bounce rate, false no-records
For every platform on the panel, Datavant family included, refreshed each quarter.
PROVIDER SCORECARDS
Turnaround, wet-ink rules, no-records rate
By facility, so claim teams route and escalate on evidence.
Read the full case study
The complete 12-page analysis, every exhibit, and the methodology.
About The Records Company
Better records. Better outcomes.
The Records Company is a national medical-record retrieval partner serving legal, insurance, healthcare, and government clients. It pairs disciplined intake with transparent status on every request and a fully auditable record of the work, so clients can see at any moment exactly where each request stands and what it has cost. This case study is based on a real, anonymized client engagement, published for educational purposes.