Document Scanning Blog

Before any medical office can make the leap into electronic medical records (EMR), they must first be able to visualize how the new “paperless” practice will look.  It is only by looking at the big picture that medical practitioners can see how they will benefit from making the transition.  Besides making any medical office more efficient and more compliant with government mandated privacy laws, the implementation of an EMR system will yield multiple benefits in terms of efficiency.  Once the new EMR system is up and running, the office will save time, money and valuable office space while improving the quality and accuracy of doctor-patient communication.

Implementation involves the installation of a network infrastructure and specific document scanning hardware to get started.  Each exam room should also have a PC workstation installed if it doesn’t have one already.  Before the current paper charts can be “retired”, a system of doing this effectively must be decided upon. Some offices only transition the charts to EMRs on an “as-seen” basis, which means they would only scan the documents of patients they plan to see that day.  Other offices use the “A to Z” approach.  Either one works fine. 

Key elements of the paper chart must first be summarized before they can be transitioned into an EMR.  This is where the process can get a little tricky, because a physician may enter a progress note for the patient, and then pass it on to a nurse to add their medication list.  Doctors would have to choose which documents in the chart should be scanned.

A system must then be established for integrating information and/or document scanning from external sources.  These may include radiology reports, lab results, consult letters and the like.  Doing this effectively requires an electronic interface between the institutions that interact with the office most frequently.  This has proven to be an ideal strategy, as evidenced by the fact that 90 percent of all external data comes into doctor’s offices via electronic interfaces. 

Once every chart has been scanned and the proper workflow parameters have been set up, medical practices realize immediate benefits by adopting an EMR system.