A medical record summary is a condensed account of a set of medical records: what the diagnoses were, what treatment was given, what the studies showed, what the outcome was. It reduces volume. A medical chronology is the same records organized in date order, encounter by encounter, so that the sequence of events is visible. It imposes structure. The two are different operations on the same material, and the useful document for most purposes does both at once.
A summary answers "what is in these records" for a reader who will not open them. It is the document an adjuster reads to set a reserve, the paragraph in a demand letter that describes the injury, the section of an IME report that reviews the treatment. Its virtue is brevity and its risk is selection: a summary reflects what the summarizer thought mattered, and a summary written by an advocate reflects the advocate's case.
A chronology answers "what happened, in what order, according to whom." It is the document a lawyer uses to prepare a deposition, an examiner uses to check a claimant's history, a defense firm uses to find a treatment gap. Its virtue is completeness and traceability; every entry has a date, a provider, and a page. Its risk is bulk: a chronology of a 3,000-page record can run forty pages, and a reader who wants the story in a paragraph will not find it there.
A chronology with a one-line entry per encounter is an index, not a summary, and it sends the reader back to the record for everything that matters. A summary with no dates is a narrative that cannot be checked. The document professionals actually want has the timeline as its structure, with each encounter summarized in place: the date, the provider, the complaint, the findings, the plan, the page. Read top to bottom it is a chronology. Read for any single encounter it is a summary. That combination is what most record review services mean when they say either word, and it is what to ask for.
Once the record is on a timeline, a clinician reading it can see patterns that are not visible in the raw record: a gap in treatment, a complaint that predates the incident, a history given to one provider that contradicts the history given to another, an imaging finding described in terms that suggest it is old. Flagging those patterns is a separate layer of work, sometimes called analysis, and it is where the reviewer's clinical training matters. Whether to order it depends on the case. A file with an uncontested injury and a short treatment course needs the timeline. A file with a causation dispute needs the flags.
Per-page pricing is the norm, and the rate should be published rather than quoted. NaviCase charges $0.25 per page for the Record Summary, which is the combined chronology and encounter summary described above with page citations, and $0.40 per page for Summary + Analysis, which adds the flagged gaps, prior conditions, and discrepancies. A 1,000-page record is $250 or $400. Both are read in full by a nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or physician in active orthopedic or spine practice and returned as PDF and Word in five business days. Orthopedic and spine injury cases are the focus.
Not strictly. A summary condenses the records; a chronology orders them by date. The most useful record review document combines both: a dated timeline with each encounter summarized and cited.
The combined document, which at NaviCase is the Record Summary. If causation, prior conditions, or treatment gaps are in dispute, order Summary + Analysis so those patterns are flagged by a clinician.
NaviCase charges $0.25 per page for the Record Summary and $0.40 per page for Summary + Analysis, with a $150 case minimum. A 1,000-page record is $250 or $400.
A North America-based nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or physician in active orthopedic or spine practice, who reads every accessible page, under the direction of a board-certified orthopaedic surgeon. AI-based tools help organize the record; the clinician creates and verifies the summary against the source pages.
The NaviCase Record Summary is the timeline with each encounter summarized on it, $0.25 per page, on orthopedic and spine cases.
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