Document Scanning Blog

This is the year that the federal government has set as the benchmark for all medical facilities to make the transition to electronic health records.  In preparation for the next phases of the Healthcare Reform laws, many medical practitioners have already finished the process.  But if your office is just starting to look at medical records scanning, it may have paid off to wait. 

 

Solutions for medical record scanning and EHR management software abound.  What may have seemed like an insurmountable task a few years ago is much less stressful now.  One reason for this is the number of easy to use software programs and inexpensive scanning equipment that is specifically designed for the small medical practice. 

 

Despite the availability of do-it-yourself solutions for doctors’ offices, some physicians have made the decision to outsource.  Here are some of the best reasons to outsource your EMR/EHR scanning:

 

·         A small office with only a few full-time employees would require a lot of overtime to successfully transition to electronic medical records

·         Office employees may find it difficult to learn how to use the new software effectively, which could result in costly errors over time

·         The process of transitioning to electronic medical record scanning may make it difficult to keep the office organized

 

Of course there are several reasons why small medical practices decide to do it themselves, one of the biggest ones being the perceived expense of outsourcing.  Before making a determination about which way to go, consider the potential costs to the practice of paying employees versus paying a document scanning company.  Also consider the costs of organizational downtime and potential errors in using the software. 

 

Even though the cost of hiring a document scanning team may appear more expensive, it will be a lot easier to implement without being a drain on your resources. 

Ever since Microsoft introduced its SharePoint software program, more solutions than ever have been added for imaging and capturing documents.  As a primary solution builder in this space, SharePoint focuses on workflow and solving problems related to running a business digitally. Below is an overview of some of the most important trends affecting the document imaging and scanning industry, and what they are doing to make document management stress free.

 

ADE, or Advanced Data Extraction, is a function that will automatically view and extract the Meta data  to make processing key business document more efficient.  Now an affordable element for any document scanning management system, ADE reduces the amount of staff time needed to look up data and re-enter it into a new document or program.

 

Fax processing is a secure, point-to-point method of imaging and communication that is ideal for businesses that need a high level of security.  Whether in the financial services or medical fields, inbound faxes can be processed and routed to appropriate departments and repositories to improve workflow and efficiency throughout an organization.

 

Redaction is another way to keep confidential information secure, and prevent overexposure of sensitive data within digital or paper documents.  Automated redaction is an application that parses the text of a document to obscure certain information from being seen.  These can include tax ID numbers, social security numbers, and sensitive medical information.

 

Once the document scanning is complete, the real work can begin, by adding the appropriate document scanning management software and related tools to improve workflow, security and overall efficiency in the workplace.  With so many medical, legal and financial practices using digital and online document storage, the natural next step in the process is to do so securely and efficiently.  Tools like ADE, fax processing and redaction are just a few of the most important new trends in document management. 

By allowing users to store documents in a structured, digital environment, document management software helps small business owners to be more organized and flexible in running their business.  By including metadata to describe the contents of each document in the system, automated document management software provides much-needed structure and hierarchy for important documents, and puts them into a more intuitive workflow for user accessibility. 

Some of the latest document management programs are so sophisticated that they can automatically add Meta tags to office documents.  Known as “auto tagging”, this process works by dragging a document scanning  file into a folder that allows it to “inherit” the metadata information from other documents in the same folder.

Software programs such as FileHold will store and manage nearly every type of file, but even more importantly it can also search these documents for specific text and index them accordingly.  Supported documents include any Microsoft Office format, plus similar programs like Lotus, WordPerfect, Corel, Freelance and others.  It will also work with HTML documents and PDF files.

With so many employees “touching” a file, and sharing administrative rights, it may seem like revisions would be difficult to manage. However, document scanning management software can maintain a virtual paper trail, showing who viewed or changed it and when, and better yet, it will also retain all versions of the document so an earlier version can be recovered. 

Images can also be stored in a document management system, and they can be stored in their original, or native, format.  While it is recommended that users convert images to PDF files for optimum efficiency, it isn’t necessary to do that.  Just like text documents, images are indexed using metadata tags that include important keywords and phrases pertaining to the image.

Known as the process by which an image file is converted into an editable and searchable document, OCR scanning has really taken off in recent years. This is because with so many businesses switching to online document management (instead of cumbersome paper files), the need to find and edit existing documents is as important as ever. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, OCR scanning is used for managing live documents which can be found using keyword-based or parametric searches, edited, and then retained in multiple versions on a server. This process of content manipulation can be used by law firms, archives managers, educators, museums and medical facilities, among others. It can also be translated easily into multiple languages, including HTML. OCR scanning became more widely known about ten years ago, but there are still very few standards that define OCR applications. While some software programs claim to cut down on error rates, few are capable of delivering high quality OCR-scanned documents at a reasonable price. For the thousands of businesses looking to transfer large amounts of original files into digital data, speed and accuracy are a major concern. This is mainly because the original documents need to be out of reach for the period of time it takes to have them professionally scanned and uploaded into digital files. One solution is to scan documents in segments throughout the year by a professional document scanning company who promises quick turnaround. Volume and turnaround time are the most important factors in determining the need for a professional document scanning company. In the consumer as well as the professional arena, most scanners can handle OCR imaging. If you choose to go this route, consider buying one where the software is part of the machine itself, as this seems to increase speed without sacrificing accuracy. Ultimately, turnaround time and volume will determine whether a job should be handled in-house or outsourced to a document scanning company.

The modernization of personal health records (PHRs) is helping to take a several scattered pieces of medical information and put it into one web-based record. When you think about all the places where an individual’s medical information is currently stored, you will realize how tedious this process can be. Everything from your physician’s scrawled notes on your chart, to immunizations, hospitalization records, lab results and your prescription drug history will eventually be made into one cohesive PHR. Since the advent of medical records scanning and electronic medical records (EMRs), a number of healthcare providers have taken on the challenge of going fully “online” with their medical practices. While this whole transition has prompted privacy concerns from patients, as well as a whole host of new HIPAA regulations, it will ultimately help patients better manage their own health. While patients wait for their providers to catch up with technology by implementing EMR scanning and electronic document storage, they can take on some of the responsibility themselves by creating their own PHRs using software designed for the personal computer. These programs are just as simple as checking your email and the information doesn’t belong to your doctor — it’s all yours. Using these software programs, you can manage your own family’s health history, which can be easily gathered from healthcare providers. Plus, most of these programs offer some cool tools that will show you how some of your medications may interact, or allow you to track weight loss. Ultimately, all providers will be expected to use electronic document imaging to upload your information to a PHR on your behalf, which is expected to improve the flow and quality of data, reduce costs, and benefit your overall health. But for now, you can get started with your own PHR using software provided by your health insurance company. Some programs offer ways to access records that you can send to a new doctor, order prescriptions, and keep track of any new information about your conditions or prescriptions. In addition to software, some web-based programs make tracking your health records quite simple. One such company is PassportMD. They offer a fee-based subscription that will collect your information for you, including test results and prescription drug records. Applications on GoogleHealth and Microsoft’s HealthVault allow you to upload blood pressure and glucose readings directly from a home device to your online record.

Picture this: You are in charge of mid-sized law firm’s legal library. You manage an archive of legal documents and memoranda so vast that you appear more like a museum curator than an employee at a law practice. (Not an unusual description of most law libraries, by the way). And all of the time, document storage space, and money that you spend in managing that library has become a significant problem. So what is the fix? Thankfully, these days a digital conversion, wherein the majority of your legal paper is transmitted through digital document imaging to a digital platform, will usually do the trick. But not so long ago, in the days before OCR service (optical character recognition), if you ran a business, non-profit or an archive and you wanted to convert certain simple text-heavy paper documents to a safer, more efficient and cost effective digital platform, you would have been, well, swimming in a world of paper. In other words, you would have been stuck and out of luck. Fortunately, today that is no longer the case. But what is optical character recognition scanning, anyway? Well, to put it simply, OCR is a method of document scanning and converting “image files” (IE pictures of text such as “TIFFs” and “PDFs”) into editable documents that are text searchable. (IE “SPDFs and “.DOCs”). In other words, optical character recognition technology turns practically useless picture of documents into functionally workable documents that can be opened and edited on most word processing, desktop publishing and editing software. Revolutionary as OCR service technology has been, it has its risks as well. Most notably is the fact that no OCR transition is perfect. Typically, OCR transitions work best when the source material to be converted is simple (EG Times Roman or Courier font), clean, large (12 point or higher) black text against a white background. But the bottom line is that if maintaining the accuracy of your data in conversion is particularly important to you, you need to work with an experienced OCR document scanning company that takes additional steps to ensure that the new digital copies will be as close to the originals as possible.