You want to get PAID for the medical records you review. Here’s your Professional Legal Nurse Consultant primer on correctly billing your attorney-client so you earn the maximum. No more guesswork. No estimating. Follow these steps to make it easy for you and your attorney when it comes to billing.
The big difference between billable and nonbillable work for Legal Nurse Consultants
As a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant, your work is almost exclusively “billable” work. This means you’ll earn money for the legal nurse consultant services you provide. “Nonbillable” work, on the other hand, is work performed for which you can’t bill.
Let’s look at examples of both.
Billable work examples
Reviewing medical records, reviewing medical bills, summarizing medical records, summarizing medical bills, drafting a chronology, researching medical conditions.
Nonbillable work examples
Preparing your invoice for work you performed, working on your own company’s marketing projects, trainings you attend, doing administrative work in your business, attending meetings not related to client assignments.
Six-minute billing cycle defined
Lawyers usually bill their clients in six-minute increments. Every six minutes of time equals .10 of an hour.
As a PLNC, you might set your hourly rate at $150 per hour to review medical records. If you’re earning $150 per hour and you review a medical record for 30 minutes, you’d bill your attorney for .50 which means you’d earn $75.
Interestingly, for tasks that take you less than .10, you’ll normally round it up to .10 which is 6 minutes of time. Of course, it’s your prerogative if you want to not bill at all for tasks that take such little time.
For example, let’s say you receive an email from your attorney’s paralegal on a new case with instructions, descriptions, and the link to the medical records. If it took you close to six minutes to review this, you’d bill for .10. On your invoice you’d list the date, the description of “Review email from [Name of Paralegal] regarding instructions, description of facts, and medical records link” and the amount of time which would be .10.
You’re expected to be precise in your description on your invoice. This means including details on exactly what you did for the time you’re billing.
Ask yourself if what you did was billable or nonbillable work
You’ll likely never bill for nonbillable work. Just know that the time it takes you to draft your invoice is on yourtime, not theirs. The first time you put together an invoice with your billable time on it, it could take you thirty minutes or longer. As you prepare more and more invoices it’ll take you much less time. Regardless, that’s part of doing business and you can’t bill for that.
One very important concept you should know is that you should ALWAYS be truthful in the amount of time billed. One overbill and your job with that attorney could be over. Worse yet, your reputation could be ruined. It’s never worth it to bill more than you actually worked.
The good news is that determining what’s billable and nonbillable work gets easier. As a matter-of-fact, you’ll likely master this distinction on your very first project.
P.S. Want to know how to hike your nursing income as a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant? Go here.
