5 Tips to Make Your IRO Perform Better

Working as a partner with your IRO means clear communication of what you expect back from it. Understanding the right questions to ask helps minimize your costs by ensuring the IRO reviews the correct records and medical facts and then delivers a decision addressing your need. Here are few tips that will help the IRO meet your expectations and provide you with meaningful outcomes for both the patients and you:

1. Clearly indicate the specific issue you want the IRO to address, such as standard of care, medical necessity, experimental/investigational, plan language interpretation or a combination of these.

2. Develop a list of questions you want answered with authoritative and substantiated responses.

3. Include all relevant chart documents and plan language that the IRO needs to provide a trustworthy response.

4. In the case when you have exhausted efforts to get the records you need for a review, a negative response from your IRO can be the motivation you need to spur a record holder to release them

5. Before starting an independent medical review, it’s the responsibility of the IRO to call with questions to clarify your request. Make it easy to do that by giving the contact information of anyone they need to call and the best time of day to reach them.