The situation
A two-doctor PI / auto-injury chiropractic clinic in Phoenix. ~90% of patient volume came from MVA referrals, the majority through 8 referring attorneys. ~200 open lien cases at any moment, tracked in a sprawling Google Sheet that nobody fully trusted.
Two structural problems:
- Narrative reports for completed cases sat for weeks before being drafted, edited, and sent. Attorneys would call asking for them. The clinic would scramble. Settlement timelines got delayed. Some attorneys quietly stopped referring.
- Same-day MVA bookings were the differentiator that won referrals in the first place — but late-day MVA inquiries (5 PM Friday) still hit voicemail and disappeared.
What changed
- Lien pipeline board replaced the spreadsheet. Every case had a card with current status, days-in-stage, and any overdue items (e.g., “Narrative pending for 14 days”).
- Narrative-template engine generated first-draft narratives from visit notes. The DC reviewed, edited, and signed. Turnaround dropped from 21 days to 4.
- MVA-tuned AI receptionist picked up after-hours inquiries with PI-specific triage (date of accident, attorney, police report, mechanism).
- Attorney referral CRM identified that 5 of the 8 attorneys generated 80% of volume. The clinic tightened those relationships with monthly case-update digests and quarterly thank-you gifts.
What the numbers mean
The narrative-turnaround win is the unlocking one. A faster narrative means faster settlement, which means faster lien payoff — which makes the clinic a preferred provider for attorneys whose own cash flow depends on settlements.
This case is illustrative. Specific clinic names and live numbers are not shared.
The unexpected unlock
The attorney-referral CRM. Both doctors knew anecdotally who their top attorneys were, but they hadn’t quantified the distribution. Seeing that 5 attorneys generated 80% of volume reshaped where they invested in relationship maintenance. They stopped sending generic holiday gifts to 30 attorneys and started sending thoughtful personalized notes + quarterly lunches to the top 5. Referral volume from those 5 climbed.
What we’d do differently in retrospect
Build the attorney portal sooner. A few of the top attorneys eventually asked, “Can I just log in and see status on my own cases?” We hadn’t built that in the first pass. We added it during the dedicated-hours window and it became a relationship-defining differentiator — attorneys could check status without phoning the clinic.
Book a demo → to see the lien-pipeline + narrative-template flow.
“We had a spreadsheet with 200 open cases. We knew we were forgetting things. We knew narratives were sitting too long. The pipeline dashboard let us see, for the first time, exactly which cases were stuck and where.”