Make no mistake about it. Just because most healthcare providers in the U.S. are now making the transition to EMRs (electronic medical records) doesn’t mean that paper has become obsolete. Paper documents (e.g. lab reports, referral letters, EOBs, patient transfers, etc.) still inundate medical facilities -particularly physicians practices. And what about all those old paper patient charts? Physicians have been recording patient histories on paper for years (many still do).
All of these historical charts don’t just magically convert to EMR data with the snap of a finger. They either have to be converted into electronic data and migrated into an EMR or be managed by a separate system. A data migration initiative can be too expensive for a physicians practice, yet continuing to manage patient charts in paper form can be an expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone administrative burden.
Morton Plant Mease Primary Care (MPMPC), a non-profit group of more than 100 primary care physicians, found the cure to its paper chart management woes with an electronic document management repository.
Challenges:
- Paper storage and record archival
- Costly, inefficient and inconvenient information retrieval
Solution:
- Scanned all of their paper into iSynergy Document Management
Benefits:
- Elimination of warehouse requirements
- Instant access to all patient information
- $140,000 in annual savings
“It used to take 48 hours to a week for a physician to receive a paper record from the warehouse,” says Nancy Cothern, Director of Physician Management Service.“With our new electronic document archive, physicians now receive the records they request within the hour. In addition, the solution enabled us to terminate our relationships with the storage warehouses – saving us approximately $140,000 last year in warehousing costs alone. We expect our savings to be even more substantial this year.”
Download the full Case Study
Article originally published in Healthcare Technology Online Magazine.
About Samantha McCollough
