If you’re doing med-legal work — especially as a Qualified Medical Evaluator (QME) or Independent Medical Examiner (IME) — chances are you’ve started hearing more and more about AI. Maybe a colleague mentioned it or maybe you’ve seen a flashy ad that promises to “automate” your entire workflow.
This guide breaks it all down in plain English: what AI actually is, how it works, what to watch out for, and how to tell if a tool is the right fit for your med-legal practice.
AI gets a lot of hype and even more confusion. One common misconception is that AI always refers to full automation, where software takes over and does everything for you. But that’s not the only way it works.
There’s a big difference between automated, agentic, and augmented tools:
In the med-legal space, this distinction really matters. Because you, as the evaluator, are responsible for the report — and your name goes on it.
Most of the AI tools you’ve heard about — like ChatGPT — are built on something called a large language model (LLM).
A large language model is kind of like a super-fast, pattern-recognizing engine. It reads a lot of text (billions of documents), learns how words and ideas are typically connected, and then uses that knowledge to generate new content. Learn more about what an LLM is here.
In the case of record review, think of it like a first-year med student who’s memorized every textbook but has never touched a patient.
A hallucination is when the AI makes something up that sounds correct — or misrepresents a fact — even if it’s not true. It's like when a person confidently misremembers a detail or fills in the gaps with a guess.
Why does this happen? Because most AI models are trained on large amounts of human-written data — from websites, articles, forums, and other sources. And as we all know, not everything on the internet is accurate. The AI learns patterns from this data, not truth. So when it’s unsure, it often fills in the blanks in ways that sound plausible but aren’t necessarily correct.
What’s tricky is that it says all of this with complete confidence — even when it’s wrong.
That’s why AI should never replace a physician’s judgment or clinical experience. And why there needs to be safeguards in place — so you always know where the information came from and whether it can be trusted.
This comes up a lot: “Why not just use ChatGPT? It’s cheaper.”
Here’s why that’s risky:
There are also some less obvious limitations:
What you as a QME/IME need is a vertical AI solution — a tool built and trained specifically for the unique demands of med-legal work.
General-purpose AI models like ChatGPT are trained on a vast amount of data — everything from Reddit threads to Wikipedia articles. But vertical AI models are trained on millions of pages of domain-specific content — medical records, legal standards, structured formats, and more — so they speak your language and understand your workflow.
And the best systems go a step further by using something called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).
That’s a fancy term for a simple idea: train the AI by showing it how real experts think. Instead of just learning from raw data, the AI is fine-tuned by physicians, attorneys, and medical-legal professionals who guide its behavior — correcting when it’s off and reinforcing patterns that match real-world expectations.
This means the system doesn’t just generate plausible text — it starts to behave more like someone who understands what matters in a medical-legal report.
These tools are purpose-built to help you sift through medical records, generate chronologies, surface key findings, and build defensible reports — faster and more accurately than ever.
The more niche your work is (and med-legal work is very niche), the more critical it becomes to use the right platform. That’s why tools like ChatGPT are general-purpose AI and using one for med-legal work is the wrong tool for the job.
So if general AI tools like ChatGPT aren’t built for this kind of work — what is?
MediScan AI is a vertical AI solution purpose-built for med-legal professionals.
It helps you review large sets of medical records quickly by generating editable summaries and timelines, surfacing key events, and organizing information around your workflow. You stay in full control. The AI supports your thinking — it doesn’t replace your judgment or authorship.
Unlike general-purpose AI, MediScan is trained specifically for QME/IME reporting. That means it’s not pulling patterns from internet content. It’s trained on millions of pages of medical and legal data that is then fined-tuned weekly and reinforced using RLHF.
This approach helps the AI understand not just what to pull out, but how to think like someone in your field. Over time, the model gets better at recognizing causation, apportionment logic, treatment timelines, and clinical relevance which are all things that matter in your report.
And here’s something else that matters: MediScan is 100% U.S.-based. Your data never leaves the country. It’s never routed overseas. And unlike platforms that outsource “human QA” to teams in India or the Philippines, we don’t outsource at all. The only person reviewing the raw AI output is you — the physician.
To prevent hallucinations and improve accuracy, MediScan uses a set of layered safety measures we call the Reliability Agent — think of it as an agent working behind the scenes to help you get the most reliable, fact-based output possible.
Here’s how it works:
We give you structured, high-quality raw AI outputs that are traceable, editable, and transparent. You get to make the final call on what’s accurate and report-ready. Because at the end of the day, the AI’s job isn’t to replace you. It’s to make you faster, sharper, and in full control.
If you’re a QME or IME, chances are:
AI can help with that — if it’s the right kind of AI.
But if it’s the wrong kind — if it’s not compliant, not designed for your field, or not transparent — it could actually put you at risk.
And yes, some physicians have already gotten letters reminding them, for example in California, under California Labor Code § 4628, you can’t delegate the medical opinion or authorship of your report to AI. The law makes it clear: only the physician can conduct the exam, take the history, review prior records, and prepare the report’s conclusions. This means that you, not a software platform, must be the one who forms the opinion and writes the final report.
However, using AI as a tool to assist — not replace — is perfectly acceptable. In fact, the Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) own quality assurance checklist advises:
“If artificial intelligence is used in the medical legal report process, please consult with your licensing board as to disclosure... It appears consistent to disclose the use of artificial intelligence by listing at a minimum the name of the program and the purpose for which it is used.”
— California Department of Industrial Relations [source]
This is where MediScan is aligned by design. MediScan never generates your report for you, but it can help! It gives you summaries and timelines you can edit, expand, or ignore. You are the author. You’re in control of every word that ends up in the final report — which makes, say a California QME, stay compliant with § 4628 from start to finish.
Additionally, the American Medical Association (AMA) has emphasized that AI should augment physician expertise—not replace it and MediScan AI has built its product specifically around these guidelines. Their published principles state that AI tools in healthcare:
"must be designed, developed, and deployed in a manner that is ethical, equitable, responsible, accurate, and transparent.”
— American Medical Association, AI Principles [source]
MediScan aligns with this by putting AI in a support and augmentation role — not a replacement role. If your name is on the report, you should be the one driving the process. MediScan is built to help you do that — faster, cleaner, and with full control.
Here’s a simple checklist:
Okay, brief pitch — but only because it checks the boxes above:
And most importantly: It keeps you safe, efficient, and in the driver’s seat.
The best AI feels like an assistant, not a boss. It doesn’t make the call — you do!
You’re the expert. AI should help you spend less time digging through PDFs and more time doing what matters. If you’ve ever thought, “There’s got to be a faster way to do this,” — there is. You just need to choose tools that were built for how you actually work. If you’ve made it this far and are curious how MediScan can speed up your workflow book a demo here.
