For organizations that have to accommodate less voluminous records and for those organizations that only need to convert documents from the day record digitization begins, many copiers will be up to the task.
It is absolutely vital that records are readily accessible to ensure that your patients receive the best care possible. This means that every organization, from the largest hospital to one-person general practitioner practices, needs to be able to obtain patient records. Every individual involved in a patient's care, from doctors to nurses, need to be able to view a patient's medical history.
While access is key, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economical and Clinical Health) Act have established strict standards for ensuring the security of those records. A balance must be struck between access and security.
When seeking to find that balance, paper records can hold you back and make compliance more difficult. Paper records are difficult to share and not inherently secure, since documents can be lost, misplaced, or stolen.
An electronic health record (EHR) system combined with document management software is the best way to pivot from paper records to a digital depository that allows a patient's records to be available to medical personnel, while being protected against intrusion by others. The most important tool available to medical professionals to initiate the switch from paper to digital is the office copier.
While using an existing copier to convert paper files might make sense for many smaller offices, it might not be a feasible option for larger health care providers with more paper records. If there is a significant amount of paper files, it might be more efficient and cost-effective to either purchase a dedicated scanner to convert those files or get a third-party service provider to handle the backfile conversion. It might also make sense to limit digitization to only those files to which a medical professional needs access, while relying on file cabinets or offsite archiving for less important records.
For organizations that have to accommodate less voluminous records and for those organizations that only need to convert documents from the day record digitization begins, many copiers will be up to the task.
Copiers combined with document management software can do more than just improve patient record access. Here are just a few of their capabilities:
Using technology will not unilaterally improve office efficiency; it needs to be coupled with well-designed processes. In its research paper, Paper-Free Process: Measuring Outcomes, AIIM provides a few key insights to ensure that your state-of-the-art technology and optimized document management software is being coupled with cutting-edge best practices.
If you are ready to learn more about how your copier can make your practice better, click on the image below to read our free eBook.