Death by Paperwork? How Claims Adjusters Can Get Their Time and Sanity Back 

It starts with a familiar scenario: A Workers' Comp claims adjuster opens their inbox Monday morning to find 10,000 pages of medical records waiting. Some are scanned sideways. Some repeat five times with new cover sheets. Most aren’t even relevant.

And the clock is already ticking ...

Across California’s Workers’ Comp landscape, claims professionals are being buried in documentation. It is not just frustrating. It is affecting their health, their time, and their ability to deliver high-quality outcomes.

The Hidden Burnout of Record Management

Medical record overload is not just a workflow issue. It’s a quality-of-life issue.

When you spend your week cross-checking duplicates, hunting down the most recent version of a report, or trying to reassemble a 10,000-page file that came in out of order, something else gets lost: clarity, job satisfaction, and focus.

A recent analysis by Effingo Technology looked at over two million pages of med-legal records and found that the average case file contains 20% duplication after attempted removal. In extreme cases, duplication levels reached nearly 50%, and this is after Insurance Carriers attempted their duplicate removal. 

The Financial Weight of Page Overload

In California, Qualified Medical Evaluators (QMEs) are paid $3 per page, regardless of the content. This means that every unnecessary record, every copy, every cover sheet, every slight variation, directly increases claims cost. This burden should not be placed on the Claims professionals, there are easy to use workers-comp specific AI tools that remove unnecessary pages from case files, instantly and accurately. 

In one case, a 6,400-page submission included more than 3,200 duplicate pages. That’s $9,600 in pure waste. In another, duplicate charges racked up $58,000 over multiple packets containing duplicates. This was from a carrier that reported to already have tools in place to remove duplicates.

Beyond cost, duplicates increase the likelihood of errors in medical interpretation and treatment delays. As one defense attorney said, “Applicant attorneys flood us with files at the last minute. We do not have the time to manually remove all these duplicate records.” Billing errors occur and cases go into unnecessary litigation, due to excessive medical record duplicates.  

The Case for Smarter Tools

Manual cleanup is no longer realistic. Even teams with the best intentions are running out of time and patience.

That’s where tools like Effingo come in.

Effingo is the only med-legal-specific tool designed for Insurance Carriers and Third Party Administrators and Defense Firms to clean, organize, and de-duplicate massive volumes of medical records without relying on manual labor alone. Effingo combines advanced AI and med-legal expert human review to remove both exact and near-duplicates, irrelevant pages, and non-medical clutter by up to 99%.

But Effingo doesn’t stop at cleanup. It also:

• Removes unnecessary “filler pages”, duplicates and blank pages (even poorly scanned or handwritten notes)
• Converts every page into OCR, making the document fully searchable and editable
• Provides custom word searches such as surgeries, prescriptions, and progress notes
• Provides analytics dashboards and customizable reports for defense teams and carriers
• Delivers clean, court-ready PDFs reviewed and certified by a former DWC Judge

And because security matters, Effingo operates on a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based portal with role-based access and tracking. No more buried files in email chains or endless links.

Why This Matters for Claims Adjusters

The average adjuster spends approximately 16 hours on every 1,000 pages of records, just trying to locate, reorganize, or resend documents. With Effingo for example, case files arrive already polished and sorted. That means:

•   No more second-guessing whether the report you’re reading is the final one
•   No more explaining why a QME report was delayed because of duplicate content
•   No more evenings spent doing what your software couldn’t
•   And no more stress over accidentally approving duplicates that could spark disputes

That's 16 hours adjusters can spend building strategy, reducing exposure, or simply getting home on time.

A Smarter Workweek Begins with Smarter Files

Claims Adjusters need to demand a purpose-built platform that modernizes how medical records are prepared, reviewed, and delivered in Workers’ Compensation cases. By eliminating redundant content and streamlining final PDFs for QME submission, this transforms a historically manual process into a more accurate and efficient one.

Claims professionals need more than automation. They need tools that reduce administrative burden, support case accuracy, and help protect against costly errors. Tools that empower adjusters, defense firms, and carriers with files they can trust, ready on time, properly structured, and easier to navigate.

Because working overtime to fix someone else’s disorganized paperwork should no longer be part of the job.

About Effingo

Effingo was developed by seasoned med-legal professionals, including co-founders Jonathan Norzagaray, CEO, Joseph Farran, CTO, and Tiffany Amber, EVP, whose combined expertise spans technology, operations, and Workers’ Compensation. The team is further strengthened by former DWC Judge Nikki Mehrpoo, who serves as Chief Legal Strategist. Effingo is already trusted by leading defense firms, carriers, and administrative service organizations focused on achieving greater efficiency and cost control.

Share this Workers-Comp AI tool with your Claims professionals, supervisors and even COO.

EffingoTech.com| call or text us at 1-888-976-1235

or email us at contact@EffingoTechnology.com

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