Articles

As a result of meaningful use legislation, health information management (HIM) departments are scanning or preparing to scan medical records with the ultimate dream of becoming completely paperless.  As the shelves of charts shrink, the  file room empties; space is restored. Stacks of paper gradually diminish into extinction; the pain of loose documents is gone.  Information is available at the click of a button; efficiency increases.  For many HIM professionals, this is a wonderful dream, but only a dream.  In reality, as healthcare facilities become more electronic, the total volume of paper will decrease, but the percentage of loose documentation relative to paper charts will increase.

Consequently, the all-too-familiar challenges associated with loose documentation continue to be a pain.  Loose documents take more time and resources to process than a full patient chart because batch scanning processes are designed for large volumes of paper and are not optimized to efficiently scan loose documents.  Therefore, HIM departments must dedicate resources to handle the individual processing of loose documents versus the batch processing of charts. As a result, HIM departments may not be able to reduce staff or required overtime as more paper charts become electronic because of the high percentage of loose documents.

To combat the growing challenges of loose documents, healthcare facilities should proactively analyze scanning processes and technology to optimize efficiencies.  For example, consider instituting a process that identifies loose documents when they arrive or research technologies that assist in extracting information from the documents during the indexing process.  Look specifically for day forward scanning technology that can utilize information within the document to automatically identify it and assist in indexing.

For the foreseeable future, loose documents are not going away, but they can certainly be less painful.  If you’re searching for a light at the end of the tunnel or the bottom to the stack of paper, learn more about EDCO’s proven solution for loose documents.