Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Medical Experts Online if not an "agency"?
2. Who uses Medical Experts Online?
3. What advantages does Medical Experts Online offer over the medical reporting agencies (i.e. medical reporting organisations)?
4. Have insurers and agencies not recently struck a deal which includes agreement over a fixed level of fees for medical reports provided by GP, Orthopaedic and A&E experts?
5. What impact will the new VAT legislation for medico-legal reporting have on the overall cost of disbursements for medical reports obtained via direct instructions (as facilitated by Medical Experts Online) compared with reports commissioned via medical reporting agencies?
6. Does Medical Experts Online offer deferred payment terms as do the agencies?
7. What information and features does Medical Experts Online provide?

1. What is Medical Experts Online if not an "agency"?

MEOL is a major new live online resource enabling solicitors to have immediate access to their own database of medical expert witnesses. Utilising our sophisticated programming and web based technology, solicitors can include all their own experts at no cost to take advantage of this highly developed but very easy to use programme. Delivering all the required information straight to the solicitor's computer desktop, via a simple user-friendly interface, you will be able to open up your searches to include all the thousands of other experts already included. And as you will never have to update another record again you will make significant savings in terms of resources, time and money.

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2. Who uses Medical Experts Online?

The launch of MEOL has been welcomed with enthusiasm all the professions engaged in the medico-legal industry – medical experts, solicitors, insurers, agencies, barristers, courts and police. MEOL's website is the only place where these players are able to interact, making it the universal interface of the medico-legal industry in the UK. As such it is recognised by medical experts that the single most important place to maintain their up to date medico-legal profiles is live online on MEOL. Likewise it is recognised by lawyers and insurers that the most efficient way of running and maintaining their own database of medical experts and finding and contacting new ones, for the purpose of direct instruction, is via MEOL's website. The thousands of medical experts who have already submitted their profiles live on MEOL's database have all expressed a keen interest to receive instructions directly and most have earmarked the firms they have worked for thus creating instant databases for each of them to tap into when they log on with their user name and password.

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3. What advantages does Medical Experts Online offer over the medical reporting agencies (i.e. medical reporting organisations)?

Control: MEOL reinstates the control that medical reporting agencies take away from solicitors with regard to which specific expert is used thereby causing solicitors to lose control over the quality and style of the medical expert opinion commissioned. MEOL restores that control by enabling solicitors to refer cases directly to their choice of medical expert more easily than was ever previously possible, without the intervention of any intermediary agency.

Communication: MEOL promotes a direct relationship between the solicitor and the medical expert, and facilitates communication between the two. This enables professional acquaintances to be cultivated, thereby improving the levels of service offered and received.

Client satisfaction: Experts instructed via agencies are usually paid only a fraction of the true value of their reports, whilst the agencies pocket the remaining balance of the invoice they present for the expert's report, by way of a mark-up on the fee paid to the medical expert. Direct referral enables medical experts to provide top quality work in the knowledge that remuneration for their work will not be shared with an agency. The net result is significantly improved client satisfaction.

Consent: As demonstrated by the recent landmark case of Wollard vs Fowler, many insurers do not agree with the need for the role played by medical reporting organisations and are in favour of medical experts being instructed directly, as this eliminates the administrative cost applied by the agencies to the cost of every medical report supplied. Due to the potential saving of millions of pounds, insurers are keen to support solicitors operating the direct system of referral facilitated by MEOL, and to offer their consent to the instruction of experts via this route. Insurers will therefore be less likely to object to the disbursements incurred by use of a directly instructed expert, as opposed to those incurred through the use of an agency to obtain medical expert evidence.

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4. Have insurers and agencies not recently struck a deal which includes agreement over a fixed level of fees for medical reports provided by GP, Orthopaedic and A&E experts?

In May 2007, a group of insurance companies came to a compromise agreement with a number of agencies, which sets fixed figures for the charges on medical reports prepared by GP, Orthopaedic and A&E experts. Medical Experts Online is now included in this agreement. You can search for experts who are party to it through Medical Experts Online. The only difference with MEOL is that you will instruct the expert directly and the expert will be paid directly the full fee as per this agreement. This fixed fee scheme does not cover any other medical specialties. See Addendum Table 1 for the fees agreed by the participating insurers for medical reports prepared by GP, Orthopaedic and A&E experts.

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5. What impact will the new VAT legislation for medico-legal reporting have on the overall cost of disbursements for medical reports obtained via direct instructions (as facilitated by Medical Experts Online) compared with reports commissioned via medical reporting agencies?

With over 2000 experts listing their pricing details and the number of instructions they do on average a year on MEOL we can tell you that only 17.6% of experts fall into the VAT threshold category of having to charge VAT on their Medicolegal reports. Meaning that over 80% of experts if instructed directly would not be charging VAT on the report. This provides yet another significant cost saving for insurers which they will be aware of.

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6. Does Medical Experts Online offer deferred payment terms as do the agencies?

As Medical Experts Online does not interfere in the solicitor–medical expert relationship, it is not involved with payment arrangements, which are a matter for direct negotiation between the solicitor and the medical expert themselves. Many experts already offer generous deferred payment terms (including end of case payment), and these are included in our system. Solicitors can include the terms they negotiate to the experts profiles and search accordingly by price and payment terms, such that the advantage of deferred payment terms offered by agencies is largely negated.

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7. What information and features does Medical Experts Online provide?

MEOL provides a wide array of unique features that are not all available through any other directory, register or online resource, designed to aid solicitors in their work related to procuring medical evidence. These include:


• the facility for solicitors to tag experts on the database which allows them to operate their own data base within MEOL’s;
• the facility to "fish for experts" (i.e. the facility to send e-mails to multiple experts simultaneously asking for an expert suited to providing an opinion on a particularly specialised or difficult case); and
• the facility to "fish for appointments" (i.e. the facility to send e-mails to multiple experts simultaneously asking for an expert who is able to provide an urgent appointment).

Essential contact details for the thousands of experts' who have submitted their profiles live online are comprehensively listed, and every expert's regular CV and/or medico-legal CV is both viewable online and downloadable. Other documents, such as experts GMC registration certificates and example reports, are also variously available (depending upon which other documents each individual expert has chosen to upload to their profile).

Experts can be searched in multiple ways, including:
• by their discipline,
• by their location,
• by their areas of particular expertise,
• by their fees,
• by their claimant/defendant/SJE work split and
• by payment terms ie, settlement by end of case.


Full details of the features included in the various payment packages on offer can be seen on the payment page of the website.

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Addendum Table 1 - figures agreed between insurers and agencies in May 2007 for the fixed charges agencies can invoice for providing medical reports prepared by GP, Orthopaedic and A&E experts

	Rate A Paid within 90 days of receipt of the Applicable Invoice and Required Information	Rate B Paid after 90 days of receipt of the Applicable Invoice and Required Information
General practitioner Report – No notes	£195	£220
Review notes by General Practitioner	£50	£55
Orthopaedic Report – Including review of notes	£425	£465
Accident and Emergency report – Including review of notes	£375	£410
Addendum	Cost + £25	Cost + £30
Cost of obtaining each set of medical records	Cost charged by data provider + £25	Cost charged by data provider + £30