Challenge
With patient records stored in five locations, including one off-campus location, Maury Regional Medical Center’s Health Information Management Department was constantly retrieving and returning patient records. This highly laborious process was further complicated when the department inherited additional patient records from a newly acquired clinic. Since Maury Regional transitioned to online medical records more than a year earlier, the time seemed right to look for an offsite storage solution for their thousands of patient records filling valuable space. “When you considered all the factors, we had a huge opportunity to consolidate and reorganize all of these records, and that’s why we went in search of a file room elimination strategy,” says Jennifer Busby, Maury Regional’s Director of Health Information Management.
Solution
Administrators considered two vendors, but VHA-contracted supplier EDCO was the clear choice. “EDCO’s offsite storage solution was much more advanced than the other vendor we considered,” says Busby of EDCO’s SecureStore facility, located 85 feet underground. SecureStore protects against tornadoes, floods, fire, lightning strikes and theft, provides guarded security access, and is climate controlled for temperature and humidity.
“I’m a big supporter of a site visit because it makes a huge difference when you see where your records will be stored, you meet the employees, and you see firsthand their high standards,” Busby says. “It helps to understand the policies and procedures in place to safeguard your records and to see that only the individuals who need to receive that private information have access to it.”
Additionally, EDCO’s RetrievalNet online system allows employees to enter the necessary information into its password-protected and encrypted website 24/7. EDCO then scans the appropriate documents and immediately returns them electronically. Each hospital employee has an individual system login to provide an accurate audit trail.
“EDCO worked with us to personalize the look and feel of our online requests so that it was easy for both our staff, as well as theirs, to know exactly what we need,” says Busby. “We’ve definitely found that many vendors’ sites are not as robust as EDCO’s.”
EDCO also demonstrated the ability to handle future hospital growth, adds Busby. “We have a lot of affiliated physician offices, and they’re in the same boat that we were — out of space and headed toward electronic medical records.”
Results
In December 2008, EDCO provided the necessary labor and transportation to move Maury Regional’s file room consisting of more than 5,000 boxes to its SecureStore facility. EDCO’s front-end verification process enhanced retrieval time by providing a computerized control list for easy searching, and fields that reduce the cost of segregating records for destruction. Both have greatly simplified the hospital’s once fragmented records department. “For example, I asked EDCO to put adults in one category and minors in another category, and while that sounds very simple, it’s actually a huge process,” says Busby.
Maury Regional now saves $105,000 annually due to newly leasable office space that was previously used to store files and $24,000 annually from reduced staffing. The HIM Department also decreased its previous 24-hour coverage hours and now provides coverage from 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
After Maury Regional renovates its 3,660-square-foot HIM Department, HIM will occupy 1,672 square feet and the expanding Hospitalist Department will occupy the remaining 1,988 square feet. In addition, another former 1,100-square-foot file storage area is now an information technology equipment storage room.
Working with EDCO has been an entirely pleasant experience, according to Busby. “EDCO is prompt, courteous, and wonderful with their customer service. They’re available 24/7, so if our emergency department needs a file at 1:00 a.m., EDCO is there. Not all vendors offer that. This move has allowed us to focus on the electronic medical record transition by freeing up time previously spent physically locating, retrieving, processing, and returning paper medical records. Instead, we now have an online solution with a personalized, seamless, user-friendly layout.”
