Guest Column
Does Your Scanning Solution Meet Your Clinical Needs?
By Dave McKanna, product marketing manager, Nuance
Scanning is more than just converting paper to electronic documents – the scanning processes for clinical documents should meet the unique needs of the healthcare provider while also increasing operational efficiency, supporting compliance, and improving the quality of care.
You may have seen our last article "Yes, You Still Have A Paper Problem ... And It Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon." The article discussed how many healthcare organizations don't take advantage of the powerful but easy-to-use scanning solutions because they believe the paperless practice is coming soon. The reality is that the healthcare segment is still managing and processing significant volumes of paper-based patient information – and will continue to for many years due to sluggish adoption of EHR at clinics, compounded by the inability of many disparate systems to communicate with each other.
This article will explore the differences between basic scanning and advanced, integrated scanning workflows specifically designed to address the needs of healthcare organizations. Scanning is more than just converting paper to electronic documents – the scanning processes for clinical documents need to be based on the unique workflow requirements of the organization, department, and/or user.
HEALTHCARE'S PAPER PROCESSING CHALLENGES
Oftentimes scanning solutions deployed within healthcare organizations unknowingly fall short. This is particularly true when processing critical clinical documents like consult notes or test results. In many instances front office scanning solutions require multiple manual steps to rename, parse, and store a simple static image file in a network folder or document management system before being made available in the EMR. Alternatively, back end (batch or archival) scanning solutions can be very costly. These batch solutions can also result in significant delays in the collection and processing of clinical forms from the time when they arrive at the hospital and the time when these critical clinical documents are available for viewing in the EHR.
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