<h1 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt">Altoona Hospital DocuWare Case Study</h1>
<h1 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt">Department’s DocuWare Solution Contributes to Employee Satisfaction in the Workplace</h1>
Altoona Hospital is using DocuWare to successfully manage outpatient medical records. Document retrieval time has been substantially decreased giving medical personnel faster access to important information and improving the patient-doctor relationship. The records no longer need to be microfilmed, reducing the time frame between processing and transferring them to long-term storage. More efficient work processes have increased job satisfaction, which has been reflected in lower personnel costs.
Company Background
Altoona Hospital is dedicated to ensuring high-quality; compassionate healthcare services are available, affordable and accessible to the people it serves. Established in 1885, the hospital has grown into a 350-bed facility that serves a five county region, providing basic hospital services, as well as a trauma center. Will Showalter, Chief Information Officer began looking for a software package that could help the Outpatient Medical Records department improve its workflow process and effectively mange a mounting volume of paper records. After evaluating several systems, Altoona decided to implement DocuWare.
Documents
The hospital’s outpatient medical files are made up of all types of documents, such as outpatient surgeries, same day surgeries, ER observations, chemotherapy, dialysis reports and other documents. The files range in size from a few sheets to hundreds of pages. With 100 plus outpatient procedures performed a day, the staff is constantly busy filing new procedures and pulling patient medical history requests.
Work Process
During outpatient registration, the patient is interviewed and basic information such as name, address and insurance data is input into the hospital’s main system, INVISION. After the procedure, the hard copy medical record is received in the Outpatient Medical Records department where it is put through a quality assurance process. The document is checked for completeness and the pages are placed in a basic order. Incomplete records are sent back to the attending physician. A coversheet containing basic patient information is printed from the INVISION system and becomes the top page of the medical record for that episode of care. The record is filed into the permanent record by patient ID number and visit number. The hard copy file is stored for two years before being converted to microfilm.
Retrieval requests are constant and document retrieval time is about 12 minutes per file. Once located, the original file is signed out, allowing the records staff to maintain control of the files. Because Altoona’s medical records need to be maintained for life, the long-term volume of records the department needs to store seems astronomical.
<h1 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt">IT Situation</h1>
Altoona hospital has an IT staff of 25 who maintain 1200 work stations and 55 servers. There are 40 workstations in the Outpatient Medical Records department.
<h1 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt">Solution Requirements</h1>
Altoona’s Outpatient Medical Records department wanted to find a cost effective software solution to help them automate their workflow process. Will Showalter and his staff searched for a solution flexible enough to capture, index and store documents in such away that the information could be stored and managed in a stand alone database or be imported into the hospital’s INVISION system at some point in the future. The department also wanted a document imaging solution that had electronic workflow functions with document routing features such as notations and electronic stamps.
<h1 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt">Solution</h1>
IMR Limited, an Authorized DocuWare Partner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania installed Altoona’s DocuWare solution, which consisted of a DocuWare System License, five READ-ONLY licenses, eight FULL FUNCTION licenses and the DocuWare modules ACTIVE IMPORT and CDMAKER. Additionally, one Canon 5080 color scanner and three black and white Canon 5020C scanners were purchased as part of the solution.
“Implementing DocuWare forced us to take a closer look at how we processed our documents and pushed us to redefine and streamline our processes,” said Will Showalter, Chief Information Officer for Altoona Hospital.
Over the years varying coversheets had evolved from departmental routing slips. The first change Altoona implemented was to standardize these coversheets so the information on them could be used as the index fields in the DocuWare file cabinet. Prior to scanning, the outpatient medical records still go through the same mini-assembly and quality assurance check. The only difference is that now the quality assurance staff places a barcoded coversheet between each sub-type of document in the record, to further automate the indexing process. A zonal OCR recognition software, was integrated as part of the solution to read the text and barcodes on the coversheets and automatically index the documents. Once the documents are scanned and indexed they are reviewed by the staff.
The Outpatient Medical Records department moved to the DocuWare system in July and by November they had successfully scanned all of the records from January 1, through the end of June. Today, requested medical records are instantly retrieved from DocuWare and the needed pages are printed for the requesting physician.
User Benefits
Since implementing DocuWare, document retrieval time has been reduced from 12 minutes to just second and physicians and healthcare workers have fast access to important medical information. The DocuWare system also sped up document input time. Because scanning and automatic indexing is so much faster than filing, the staff can now be more proactive in addressing other issues. Additionally, re-filing paper records has been eliminated, increasing job satisfaction and lowering employee stress levels.
Department Benefits
On a department level, reduced retrieval time means the same number of employees can do more, enabling growth without adding personnel. Medical records can be looked up in many different ways, improving workflow efficiency and increasing productivity.
By scanning outpatient records, the department gained more storage space and eliminated the hassle of having the older records microfilmed, which means that the time frame between processing the records and transferring them to long-term storage was shortened significantly, improving the hospital’s access and ability to manage their records.
“DocuWare is a very cost-effective imaging capturing software that fits our department’s needs as a complete storage database and retrieval system,” said Will.
Today, when a record is requested, only the pertinent information is printed, not the entire chart, making it easier for the attending physician to quickly review the information he or she needs.
Faster access to patient medical history spills over to faster answers to patient questions, improving the doctor-patient relationship and helping Altoona Hospital meets its goal of providing high quality health care.
Hospital Benefits
On a broader level, the efficiencies gained by using DocuWare will easily justify the investment and have already contributed to the overall success of the hospital. The solution addressed the short comings of storing and accessing paper medical records without changing established healthcare business processes, which in turn, reduced the learning curve and training costs of adopting a new information management system. The reduction in job stress has resulted in a more satisfied work force, which means less turnover and reduced personnel costs, an important factor in the medical field where it is difficult to find qualified personnel.
Outpatient records are now much more secure and DocuWare’s security features help the hospital meet the privacy requirements established in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA law.
“Once we caught up with the scanning of our backlog of outpatient charts, we really saw major time savings in chart retrieval, filing time and space—all lending more time for our employees to do what they were hired for—provide better service to our doctors and nurses who in turn can provide our patients with a higher level of care,” said Vicky Patterson, Director of Health Information Services.
Most importantly, DocuWare is helping Altoona Hospital achieve its stated goal of ensuring that high-quality compassionate healthcare services are available, affordable and accessible by contributing to the development of an integrated healthcare system that allows its employees to dedicate their talents and skills to improving the health status of the community.
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