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. 

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.