One Health Information Management Director found an unexpected ally in the Joint Commission. Marshall Regional Medical Center was headed for day forward scanning when they got a mandate from JCAHO: remove stored medical records from an old hospital building with a leaky roof, STAT.
Storage included film, paper, and old master patient index cards in metal boxes that were difficult to access. HIM Director Linda Pickering had wanted to make a change, and the JCAHO report provided the needed impetus.
Sorting Options
Pickering gathered cost information for four options. She considered staff time and costs for purging, storage, boxing, labeling, loading, transporting, destruction, fees, retrieval, scanning, prepping, and document indexing. These included:
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Building new storage
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In-house scanning
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Services from a local vendor
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Outsourcing to a national vendor
“We realized we could have the backfile scanned more cheaply than investing several million in a new storage building,” she said, “particularly when everyone is going to electronic records anyway.”
However, scanning the stored records opened up a whole set of issues that the hospital was not prepared to address in the time required to satisfy JCAHO. A detailed side-by-side comparison of the options convinced administration that EDCO’s solution was the best option.
That solution involved moving all of the records from hospital’s storage to the EDCO SecureStore facility. EDCO won the job because they could:
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Remove the records immediately
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Offer a competitive price
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Deliver requested records promptly
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Work effectively with the staff
Scan-on-Demand
The primary benefit for selecting EDCO was the scan-on-demand RetrievalNet system that returns paper and film documents electronically. Anyone at the hospital with authorization could use a computer with internet access to request a chart through the encrypted RetrievalNet site 24/7. With this system, there was no software to buy.
EDCO quickly trained Pickering’s staff to download the records into the hospital’s network. Staff in surgery and emergency rooms now request records directly from EDCO after hours.
EDCO’s Retrieval Team locates the record, scans the needed sections of the chart, then alerts the user to view, print, or download the electronic files.
Because EDCO stores and retrieves both paper and film, the hospital could avoid the hassle of maintaining and handling different archival formats. An added benefit was retrieval requests returned as electronic records.
Reaping the Benefits
“We haven’t had any problems, and we request records constantly, every hour of every day,” Pickering says. “Once the staff receives the scanned images, they simply print rather than having to copy. Time for release of information has been markedly reduced, and physicians and staff are happier.”
The FTEs who used to haul records back and forth to storage have, along with the filing coordinator, been freed up to do other things. Four part-time student positions have been left unfilled.
Marshall Regional Medical Center was able to meet JCAHO’s requirements and upgrade their storage process. Now, new records are held until EDCO’s regular monthly pickup.
If she had it to do over…”I’d do it sooner,” Pickering says emphatically.
