EP089: Revolutionizing Medical Record Access with George Bessenyei, Founder of YoCierge

I think it all comes down to the lack of enforcement, unfortunately, from the Department of Health, because normally you should just send out a request and and the laws are very clear on that you should get a direct quote in 30 days. That's the end of the story. And I see many law firms still believing in that this is how it happens in real life. But that's not that's not how it happens. You're not getting back the records in 30 days. In most cases, you're not getting the records ever, because they just ignore your request. And they come up with all kinds of excuses.

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10. Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time you're listening to this podcast, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing. We have a great guest today. George Bessenyei. Hopefully I didn't I got that. Okay, George. And I'll introduce him in just a minute. Their team from UC Irvine was at our conference last week. I think this podcast is airing week after 10 Golden Rules live. So I'm sure they did an amazing job and the presentations, George couldn't be with us. But he's gonna tell us all today, but a category that's super hot, which is medical records retrieval. And before that, just a couple quick things. We'd love it. If you liked listening to these podcasts and, and watching these on YouTube, please give us a quick like, follow share on whatever platform you're listening to it. The more people that subscribe on YouTube, or subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, the more luck we have getting great guests like George today, because people look at our channel. They're like, Oh, my goodness, there's so many likes, follows and shares. We do have over 80,000 views on our top YouTube video. So hey, we're legit. But thank you very much for being here today. And without further ado, George, welcome. And tell us a little bit about your background, and get into founding this really hot medical records retrieval company.

Thanks, Jay. Really appreciate to be here. My name is George Bessenyei. I'm the founder and CEO of medical record retrieval company called YoCierge. And we are specialized on working with law firms. Typically on the plaintiff side, most of our clients are personal injury. And mass tort clients, we also work with the Department of Justice. So that's typically the type of clients we serve. About myself. I was born in Hungary lived most of my adult life in Switzerland before moving to the US. So hence the accent and kind of started your ch by chance. I'm a computer programmer by training broken many law firms, starting all the way back in Hungary, and then in Switzerland, and then in the US later on. And for whatever reason, all my friends are most of my friends turned out to be lawyers. I'm not sure what's wrong with me. But that's just how it happened. And one of them had a successful personal injury practice in Philadelphia. And his name is Bob gagging. He was kind of not I wouldn't say suffering. But he had a lot of issues with record retrieval, they spent an absolute fortune on it, like hundreds of 1000s annually on retrieving records, and he asked me to look into it. So they were the first client for YoCierge. And that's how the whole adventure started. Pretty soon, like in six months. That was in 2017. We opened up to other clients, we started the first integration with Clio, they were the only company who talked to us at that point, because we were so started with like one client, we built a Clio integration for record retrieval, and then it's been a huge success since then, congratulations.

I love it when a product is built out of need. As matter of fact, I think in the startup industry, they always, you know, they always ask that question, like, what needs are you solving, right? What problem are you solving? And but so this was like a pro friend of yours. You're a programmer, and he's like, Hey, can you fix this problem?

Exactly. And I mean, to be absolutely honest with you before 2017, even though I've worked with many law firms, I didn't know that record retrieval existed. Like if there was a industry for that, and there were companies doing it, it was I have no idea coming from Europe, you just don't have this thing. Right. And so he he kind of introduced me to this whole set of problems. And if you look at the record retrieval industry, it's huge. It's over a billion market billion dollar more market. But by any logic, we shouldn't exist as a company. So that's kind of the interesting part like you shouldn't need your cog in core any of this great record companies

Why is that

it's hard to hard to give a simple answer to that, I think it all comes down to the lack of enforcement, unfortunately, from the Department of Health, because normally, you should just send out a request. And, and the laws are very clear on that you should get a direct quote, in 30 days, that's the end of the story. And I see many law firms still believing in that this is how it happens in real life. But that's not that's not how it happens, you're not getting back the records in 30 days. In most cases, you're not getting the records ever, because they just ignore your request. And they come up with all kinds of excuses, you didn't submit to the right place, or using the right method or something was wrong with the request, it missed a certain clothes required under HIPAA. So many of these medical record offices or even the copy service companies, they became the master of rejection. So they figured out how to reject the request, because that takes like two minutes while actually finding the request and sending to you is much more work and, and much more expensive.

So who's better at rejecting your request? The medical companies or the insurance companies, the

insurance companies lately? For records, they became super expensive?

For records? I was kidding around? Because Okay, okay. Well, I can do that, as we both work with personal injury lawyers, and their job is really to try and squeeze a few funds out of the insurance, right? Because, you know, they don't want to pay for the car repairs. They don't want to pay for the injuries. They don't certainly don't want to pay for the pain and suffering. So I guess it's it's a part of their business to reject claims. And so you're saying the medical retrievals is just as difficult? Oh, absolutely.

And I think it goes back to what I mentioned earlier, lack of enforcement. So technically, none of this should happen. But here we are. And it's happening like no video, the program a few 1000 requests every week. We don't need to dis issues. And you need to know how to deal with it, you need to know how you submitted a request to a certain facility. They they make up arbitrary rules, like we only we only accept certified mailers. If you're requesting records, or you have to send it to certain fax number, or you have to send me to submit to a certain Porter. So we have this huge database with like over 7 million providers. And we know how to get the records from certain ones. And there are good ones. So let's not just talk about the bad examples here. We have 24,000 providers and the major ones in the US where we can download the records in 30 minutes, we have an API connection to them. We identify the patient in a matter today approved for identification. And it will the records will show up in your case management system in 30 days, 30 minutes after the the authentication is done on the patient. So there are good examples. Unfortunately, most tokens are bad. But hey, that's why we are in business.

So what's the 8020 rule? Like? What are the 80% of the providers

80% of the providers are providing the records in 23 days.

See what category are they are they hospitals?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So it's hospitals, major health systems with with multiple clinics. So they are the big ones. And we are trying to focus on those when we are building out the network for this API connection. Getting the records fast, not the smaller ones, obviously. So

if someone's a solo chiropractor, operating on her own, are they on a system? Like can you do an automated request or is that

most of the times they are not, unfortunately. So that has to be manual. And that's again, coming back to the lack of enforcement because under the Cures Act, they should be under a system where we should be able to connect to but there is like zero enforcement of those rules. But at some point they have to be so even the small providers, they have to use a system which which is able to connect to so called Patient facing apps, what we created and download records from them. Reality is the small I never came across a small one actually doing that.

Here's one of my personal pet peeves and this foster same category. But I think in the same week I a couple years ago I went to the dentist and I went to a special a doctor specialist and I went to my general practitioner And I had to fill out the same paperwork all over three different times. And I said, you know, why hasn't saw someone solve this, that you just, you know, I don't know, put your phone up to a QR code and it has all of your at least you know, your basic information. And then maybe, you know, maybe you approve it, or maybe your high scan ad or whatever. And it like gives them all the basic stuff. And then, and then the whole thing is connected, because God forbid, they have to get information from each other, you know, that that's gonna be another couple weeks is use here is playing in that space at all? Or is that a different because I know Google was trying to do that, and other people were, but I still, I still find it. Just as paperwork intensive every time I go to a medical provider.

Yeah, you touched on a huge topic. And that's, that's something that everybody's discussing currently in the health data space. So it's two issues. One is the consent forms what you are signing it, at the doctor's office, every time, there is a movement to somehow have a single sign on where you have all your consent forms, and the standardized language. So if you sign one, then you don't need to sign another one. Again, another doctor can use it with that video consent, the same form you have your right, Google was involved in it, many, many companies tried it, but it's there are just so many players here and not not many wants to play The hell with the other. But there is an alliance called Carim, CA, R, I M exactly working on these like a single sign on solution for the patients. And not only for the consent forms, but for the record retrieval as well. So even in our case, if you use one of those 24,000 providers, we can get you the records in matter of minutes, you have to authenticate yourself with each health system individually, which is kind of painful for the patient, like you went to one hospital and the other one, you have to do twice the authentication, why there is no solution for a single sign on. So this alliance is exactly working on that we are also working with them. And I think we will have products coming out pretty soon this year, where we will not cover like 100% of the market. But even if it's 20 to 30%, with a single sign on, we can get you your records, that's already a huge win for our clients. It's It's everybody. When you talk to the players, everybody's standing, this is coming next year or maximum two years, but it's kind of like fusion energy, you know, it's always the next thing. But it's been the next thing for like 20 years now. So I kind of have this feeling, but it's probably I should be more optimistic about it, we are getting close to it. Eventually, you will be able to do a selfie of yourself photo of your driver's license. And that will be the authentication part and get your records from any provider. I think that's where everything is heading. That's where all our research and development is heading as well. Yeah,

I did some work I was advising bio identity company, the selfie, we actually still have some shares in the company, we actually own patents about creating basically a video of the face. So the selfie is right it'll be the only pieces and then analyze because your face is more unique than your I guess your like like the iris scan has is has problems. It's harder to do fingerprint harder to do or easier to fake or but your face is very unique. Is that Is that consistent with what you heard? Absolutely.

And the interesting thing about this, every piece of this puzzle exists as of today, there is a standard laid out to identify patients what hospitals should accept, it's called the ITU standard, which includes making the selfie, it should be a video like a short one that you describe a photo of the driver's license back check if the driver's license is a valid one. So and the hospitals should accept it, that identification. But because again, it goes back to the lack of enforcement. Nobody's really enforcing these rules. Not many hospitals accepting that and everybody's pointing finger to each other. Like there are so many players here. But I'm optimistic it's happening. Yeah.

We all know it's going to happen, but it might take Yeah. I remember years ago I was like I was thinking you know my phone should also be a camera because they're almost the same size. Cameras were getting smaller and should also be my my iPod or we even had the video cassette players. I knew they're all going to come together. I just wasn't as brilliant as Steve Jobs and Wozniak to make it up.

You out too early right now By golly louder or something,

by the way, if you're young person, you have these ideas. You gotta be like George and make it happen right? Off record retrieval. So talk to me a little bit about who it's for who uses it, who makes up the majority of your rapidly growing client list.

I think 90% plaintiff attorneys in the personal injury or the mass tort space, we work with shouldn't name clients, but we work with the largest to personal injury firms in the country, our clients names you're very familiar with. And then we have many, like small and medium sized one. We don't really work with solo practitioners, I don't think it makes sense for them to

work with Oregon, Oregon and Oregon. I

don't want to get into that. But I cannot deny or confirm they are a client of ours. Let's let's stick to that.

And that's great. You're playing at that level?

Yeah, we absolutely do. So national players in both in mass tort and personal injury. And that's good, because it gives you the volume, to build relationships, for example, with the health systems, and also you actually learn how to do it. We do approximately, we deliver around 30,000 Records monthly to our clients, which a significant number. And our average turnaround time on the non electric ones is 23 days. So it's we are proud of it, we are very transparent, everybody telling you like a number like we get to the records on 15 days or something. What we do instead, we show you on our portal real time statistics. And you can download the data like this is the order I placed this is when I get the records based on the last six months of data. And it's transparent the number is there. So you know exactly our speed on the electronic health record that the speed is not an issue. You get it in 30 minutes.

That's great. And do you guys take part of the role of tracking down the manual ones as well? Absolutely.

So we know that we have like a hybrid approach. For many reasons, I mean, the main reason, currently, we only have 24,000 providers where we can do the electronic one, this number rapidly growing. And I think we will approach like a million next year because of some agreements or what we put in place. So it will be a huge number next year and will keep growing at a very fast pace this year. But even when you get the electronic records, there are certain records not entered into their system. For example, billing records, typically they use a different system, and our clients need that. So we have a hybrid approach where we offer our clients a flat fee where they can combine all these things together like your client than to meaning the patient went to certain hospital, okay, we get the medical records in 30 minutes, we get to the billing records in 23 days, we get to the radiology images or so typically around that's getting closer to 30 days. So we get it in a package, and we charge a flat fee for that. And it's very easy to budget for our clients. Especially if you do like a high volume, many of our clients doing like, like 1000s of requests monthly. So it's good for them, they just multiply that 1000 With a flat fee, and they know how much to budget for record retrieval.

And you mentioned that you're integrated with one of the case management systems. Who are some of the books that you're integrating with.

So can you oversee the first one, like I mentioned, forever grateful for them to take on a great company we'd like to people who had no idea what they were doing. So thanks for that, Jack. And then fileline definitely in the integration partner solidify as well. Smart advocate and Neos I think they are the leading ones on the integration partners. Great. We have some other ones some smaller case management software's but these, these five are the major ones. Small bullet, by the way,

Filevin and smart advocate, they're participating in the 10 golden rules. Or if you're listening to this after April 26. They participated in 10. We love those folks, and and we hang out with it all the other legal conferences. That's great. And what's the competitive set? I mean, I got asked the tough question like Dr. Kane, Elliot is speaking at our conference, and he's the AI genius futurist integrator at files. And he's building all these AI tools like, wouldn't they try to build in the medical retrievals piece themselves? Or is it just so complex to develop those relationships?

And you never know, of course, but it's a different thing and what they are building into their system is something we actually feed data into. So what they are building is, is a more like an analytics of the records what we delivered to them On the medical record part, it's not a pure software product. Because you have to have all kinds of agreements in place with all kinds of data sources. So it's not something I expect a software company to deal with. But you never know. We always welcome competition. There are great other record evil companies on the field. So I think it's a huge market, we are always happy to see invention in the space.

Yeah, that's certainly one of the things we've found in targeting attorneys is we have a lot of friendly coopetition. Exactly, to do exactly what we do the provide the marketing piece for the attorneys, but there's, you know, 500,000 attorneys, I think, and I'm based in Florida, in Florida alone. So I think, you know, 450,000 of them, say they'll take a personal injury case on their website. So there's a lot of a lot of opportunity for us all, and lots of great opportunity to work together.

Yeah, absolutely. This is how he said, Yeah,

How involved is it to get started with your product? How does it typically happen? Who makes the introduction and who manages the implementation with you guys?

I mean, pretty much we get clients through word of mouth, that previous clients just recommending us, that's, I would say, like 80% of our new clients recommend came from a referral from an existing client. That's why we are not really good at marketing, something that I mentioned you here, so we actually quite bad at it. But the business is going well, because of the referrals. The onboarding process is, is simple. Depending on what case management software you use, some of them are less involved to integrate with others are more involved. The ones you can customize heavily. Those case management software's typically taking a bit more time for us to integrate with, but we will make it happen, don't worry about it. But we are talking about matter of days. So in some cases, it's two days the onboarding process. In other cases, it could be like seven days. If you have like a highly customized interface we have to work with, we always work with your interface. In the case management software, we don't tell you to change it and put in that or delete that field. We try to work with your setup, but you your intake fields and everything. And pretty much all the cases, we can make that happen. Even if you have different templates for different type of cases, we just adjust our system for each of your templates and records. It's a bi directional integration. So we pull the information from your case management software, to get you the records. And once the records arrive, we are pushing it back wherever you wants to see it in your system. And it's all automated, even the expenses of getting your records automatically at the end in your case management system. So when the case settles, it's easy to get reimbursed for all the regulatory costs. Fantastic.

And who's typically your client, like you said, someone refers from another firm, I imagine a paralegals using YoCierge and they change jobs. And their first thing is like, Oh, my God, I'm not going back to the manual record retrieval, we need YoCierge is that a typical case scenario or make

up? Absolutely. Yep. paralegals are, like probably 90% of our users. And they just don't want to do and they totally understand why being on the phone, like 45 minutes with CX one of the big recorder to record copy service companies are something that it's absolute waste of time, and they have better things to do. So that's why they pay a small flat fee for us, and then we take care of all those.

That's fantastic. What's a couple other things that folks should know about YoCierge?

I think of pretty much summarize what what we are doing here we have a lot of add, add on a value, add services, what we don't charge money for, for example, we put the records in a chronological order. This is done by AI, and it's been pretty accurate and it's just getting more and more accurate. So we provide every time two versions of the records the the original file from the provider, yes, and and the chronologically ordered one. We also have an integrated radiology image viewer on our portal because those these are an absolute pain to work with. If you ever tried to look at your own X ray, you have to install a program. So we built it in a browser browser and you can just view it on our portal and now we have a new tendency where certain case management software makers looking into to show our images in their software. So I think as smart advocate, we will act with the first one. If you smart advocate. You will see our radiology images what we extracted from those disc insights more than okay, in the UK. I mean, go to the new version, but I think others will follow as well. So that's kind of a unique thing. The other thing, what we do with AI, is to summarize the records. There are firms and I would include five lines as well, they, they are much more focused on it we are and they go in depth analysis or analytics of the records. We don't do that. So what we do, AI engineer reads the records and giving you like a one paragraph summary what's in it. So the idea is that you come to our portal, we go to like, two dozen pages from Jefferson Hospital. But you just need to read like one paragraph to decide, Is it important or not? Do you want to read it now? Or for other later? Is it important case or not? So it's not really an AI? Yeah, exactly. So it's not an analytics of, of direct quotes, like an in depth analysis of it. It's more like a summary what you expect there. The other unique thing what we do called medica, expense table, where we go over the billing records. And currently, this is not done by AI. But eventually, I think it will be the go over line by line to the billing records and giving you an actual summary. Like this is how much your patient paid for it. What was the CPT code what treatment was done? So this is crucial when you write your demand letters for the claim adjuster or whoever it goes to. We don't create demand letters, that's again, you need to use a specialized company, but we provide all the data for that.

Great. Tell us a little little bit a little bit about George like, where are you located? Tell us about your family.

Sure. I live in Wayne, Pennsylvania. That's where our company is located just outside of Philadelphia. I have two teenage daughters and getting a lot of gray hair lately. But the and yeah, I'm I'm also mentioned I'm a computer programmer by training. I'm a technology guy. I think that's our strength. Every I think every Jack auditory law company has certain strengths and weaknesses, our strengths definitely is his technology and how we can customize our system to meet your whatever case management system use or whatever customer needs you have. So that's pretty much what I do all day long.

What do you do for fun?

I don't like to talk about it because it's kind of silly. But since you asked me point blank, I have a I have a dirt bike and I do like motocross and that's

great. That's where you blow it out after 23,000 Medical retrieval companies. Exactly. Exactly. I was actually in Austin, Texas this weekend. And there was a motocross race. Is that the same kind of stuff?

As the stuff I like to do? Yeah, yeah.

That's there, they go insanely fast. So you're a brave man. And I asked this question, and we're both immigrants to the spine country? Or do you have an NFL team?

I'm still a European in that regard. So soccer. Who's your? Who's your? Yeah, Hungarian team? Usually? For them? If they? Are they looking

for the World Cup or the on pace to qualify? Yeah,

let's change topic.

Okay, good. Well, look, I'm down here in Miami. So I become a messy fan knows, okay. I watch a lot of sport, not

much to be proud,

it's easy, it's easy to be messy for the last few questions that I call these the short snappers or something. I don't know where I got that from. But I always like to ask people for any of their productivity tips, thing you do for your own personal productivity or the company or any apps that you use to be more efficient?

So that's a good question. I think it's a hard question for developer. Because what happens, you typically starts to start to create your own tool for whatever, but you have to use that tendency we definitely guilty of it at YoCierge. So instead of using third party tools, we tend to create our own, eventually it pays off, because that's why we can customize our system because we built everything into it. But it takes more time instead of using a ready made tool. But just so I mentioned some for you, but we didn't really create a new defined read AI great lately for conferences and conferences to create the transcripts because we just have so many calls like this, and it's good to go back and you'll need to watch the work or you can just search in the transcript tags. And the other thing when you were using

Fathom AI records, the call has to and it has a summary of the call. And so if you want to go to the part about you know, hey, we talked about read ai i could go Look at it. Exactly,

exactly, it's been great. And when it comes to medical records, one suggestion I always have to clients. Even though we provide them the radiology images on the portal, sometimes they want to see exactly the content of the disc. And not to use the one in most cases, but was delivered with a disk but use a tool called micro DICOM. Viewer. It's a free tool. And pretty much all our clients end up using it. And it works with pretty much all the disks. So that's probably a good tip for a paralegal dealing with a lot of radiology discs. micro micro dot DICOM is the standard name de iclm. And if you are micro micro DICOM

viewer, yeah, there's so many times like you're trying to open a file and your computer's trying to Hey, do you want to exactly this, and it's great when the experts show us the way through the field because you know, you're always afraid of something's got bugs, or it's got hidden

Exactly. And some of them even give you a virus alert, some of the viewer software's they put on, and if you are a Macintosh typically we suggest a tool called OSIRIX, I think it's spelled with s OSIRIX. And that's again, a free viewer tool for radiology disk. Because if you are on a Mac, often they only provided two for Windows, so you can't really use

it. Fantastic. And our CEO group, the MBA class audits are meetings. And so we always say, you know, like, what, what tips do you have for you know, the young MBA or? Or maybe for a young lawyer or even any lawyer, you know, what's your classic best business books? Is there a couple go to business books you recommend to everyone?

I think my all time favorite is kind of an older one. It's John Huntsman is the writer who owns this huge chemical conglomerate, to the public listed company, the announcements, and I think his son was the Chinese ambassador of the US. So he has a book called Winners never cheat. And I think it's just great for any anybody starting a business, it just sets you to the, to the right path to do business with and he's been hugely successful. So it's definitely a guy to learn from. Great.

And how about blogs, podcasts? YouTubes? Are there any you subscribe to that you never miss when they come in your feed.

So my wife is a foreign policy policy analyst. So we are hugely political. So all our four podcasts are, are about politics, either in the US or or in a more global level. I don't want to pick some because all of them are controversial. Like both sides, kind of like both spectrum. But I think the one so yeah, let me pick one. Because we always talk about like, which one is probably a fair balanced one. I'm a huge fan lately of the free press in the US if you heard about that. It's a new new media. It's, I think, done by some of the former New York Times stuff. And I think it's very balanced. It's called the Free Press. Someone's trying to straddle the middle a little bit. Exactly. Somebody find them like a good middle failed.

The problem is like being on a picket fence, he's straddled the middle. It's both right. Great. And last question, where can folks find out about YoCierge or find your personal social media and whatnot? Sure.

So YoCierge.com YOCI erg.com There is easy way to contact with us. And if you can't figure out how to spell my name, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only one with this name. propably.

The links will be in the show notes. So that'll be by the way, I should have said this off the top. It's YoCierge like concierge. I don't know how to pronounce it. Got it. Right. Thank you. Thanks. Great. Well, George, thanks so much for your time, and congratulations on your growth. And we look forward to learning more about y'all over the next coming months.

Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it.

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com. That is a podcast at t e n Golden rules.com