Healthcare

OptiDoc™ for Healthcare is our custom software built for individual institutions specific needs. Our applications are designed to support heavily regulated content such as HIPAA documents and sensitive data subject to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Are your important healthcare documents organized like this?OptiDoc™ is the provider for digital conversion and standards based records management at fifteen healthcare facilities. Efficient document management naturally extends into other departments such as the Business Office, AP, Medical Records and OR. Efficient document management benefits your entire organization.

One of our clients, with very enthusiastic support from the hospital administration and management staff, reports that in addition to processing paperwork in a timelier manner, they show documented savings of over $300,000 per year.

Below are examples of OptiDoc™'s stellar performances in the Healthcare Industry:

 

Case Study #1

For only the second time in its eleven year history, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has awarded a behavioral health organization their prestigious Davies Award of Excellence.

Our Center received the 2006 award for their innovative use of Electronic Health Records (EHR).

Originally created in 1994, the Davies Award of Excellence program is named in honor of Dr. Nicholas E. Davies, a practicing physician who believed that the computer-based patient record was needed to improve patient care.

"We are very honored to receive this award," said the Chief Executive Officer. "It represents another example of our ongoing commitment to quality of care and safety to the people we serve. In 1999, our Center was the first behavioral healthcare organization to win the Ernest A. Codman Award for Excellence in outcome measurement."

We are the only organization in the world to be awarded both the Codman Award for Excellence in Performance Measurement and the Davies Award of Excellence.  The Center offers a complete range of outpatient counseling and therapy, psychiatric, 24-hour emergency, vocational, and residential services.

For those unfamiliar with the behavioral health care business, the types of problems we treat can seem foreign. In fact, the problems themselves aren't so different compared to traditional medical patients. The reader might find it helpful to conceptualize our client continuum in three categories: Acute, Chronic, and Addictions.

The Center has built a large continuum of residential services, mainly for clients suffering from some form of serious mental illness such as schizophrenia. Because their levels of impairment vary, we built a wide range of residential facilities ranging from an acute stabilization unit, through group homes with 24-hour oversight, to apartment complexes for those who need little assistance. These facilities must be linked into the EHR since there is often clinical staff on site.

Many of our services can be provided to a group of clients simultaneously. This is different from most medical procedures and it causes challenges in an EHR, especially for programs that have multiple groups each day. The clients attending each group will differ, as will the clinicians running the group. For billing and productivity needs we must bill only for those clients in a particular group; chart their participation; accurately give credit to the clinicians who ran the group; while simultaneously making the charting and billing process as easy as possible.

The Center is a private, non-profit organization with a fully functional Electronic Health Records system. The EHR is a dynamic project that is being continually enhanced. We brought up the EHR core application (PsychConsult) in July 2003 and waited a year before adding enhancements. This allowed the core application and workflow with in the organization to stabilize. It is likely that some enhancement or improvement project will always be underway We see this as a normal progression in an organization committed to continuous improvement.

The following goals were in mind when we sought to implement our EHR:

  • HIPAA Compliance
  • Ubiquitous Access of Clinical Records
  • No Paper Anywhere
  • Development of a Centralized Outcomes Repository
  • Improved Security of the Clinical Record

EHR Technology Implementation began shortly after developing the first local area network and moving the organization to a client server environment Naturally there was a significant investment in hardware and software upgrades and computer purchases during this time.

Confidentiality requirements for behavioral healthcare have traditionally been much more stringent than that for the medical arena. This has changed somewhat with HIPAA .In fact HIPAA that was the "final straw" that led us to implement our electronic health record. However, we soon learned that the confidentiality requirements in HIPAA did not substantively change our day-to-day activities. In fact, in most cases state law was more stringent than HIPAA. The one significantly different area supporting our decision for the EHR was the management of access to the clinical record. HIPAA regulations in this regard are much more onerous than we previously faced and we did not believe we could meet this requirement using a paper record. While HIPAA was not the major confidentiality change we expected, it was the appropriate impetus to move us to an electronic health record.

The next significant decision was to move away from the departmental processor.

The architectural criteria required that the system function in a client server environment be compatible with Microsoft Windows applications. Once the pool of potential software products was culled to meet the designated architectural criteria, the review of necessary clinical and business functionality began OptiDoc™, an image scanning and archiving product was added to our system. The OptiDoc™ application replaced our original scanning solution that was found to be unworkable. When we went live, we wanted the scanned documents to be available in the core application itself. The only way to do this was to scan the documents into Microsoft Word documents and then attach the Word document with an embedded image. Not surprisingly, our database grew much faster than we originally planned and we had to find another solution. Now the scanned documents reside in a separate discreet database which is accessible to the clinical staff.

Approximately ten staff received two hours of OptiDoc™ advanced training in this product which includes scanning, indexing, and categorization of document templates. All other users require only 30 minute training on how to search the database and view (and if necessary, print) documents. OptiDoc™ enabled us to automate previously manual systems such as filing, copying, and distributing paper versions of documents.

We have the ability to restrict access to particular records within OptiDoc™ to all but a few people. These records are for cases requiring high security including those of our own employees who are seen by someone within the organization.

The Center currently has 281 employees. Of these 259 (92%) are EHR users. The EHR is the client record utilized by 100% of clinical staff. There is no other form of the client health record.

 

Case Study #2

The following is an overview of an installation for the medical records department in a 150-bed hospital in the southeastern United States.

  • This records department generates 1000 pieces of documentation per day.
  • The site presently has 3,900,000 documents in storage.
  • The medical records department has 7 employees. They are a supervisor, assistant supervisor and 5 clerical.
  • The volume of paper processed will approach 260,000 pieces per year. These records will be added to the documents that are in storage. Day forward documents will be kept on-line for 3 years.
  • These records will require (78) 4 drawer file cabinets to store the 3-year day- forward volume of 260,000 documents.
  • The following is a cost of maintenance of the files based on 30 minutes per day
    78 cabinets X 30 minutes per day = 39 hours
    39 hours per day X 5 days per week = 195 hours
    195 hours per week X 52 weeks per year = 10,140 hours
    10,140 hours per year X hourly cost of a full time employee
    at $ 12.00 per hour = $ 121,680.00 (includes benefits and payroll taxes)
  • The annual cost for floor space for the 78 file cabinets at 6 square foot per cabinet.
    78 cabinets x 6 square feet=468 square feet
    468 square foot at $ 1.00 per square foot per month = $5,616.00
  • These two items alone amount to an annual cost outlay of $127,296.00

OptiDoc™ Solution

Our recommended alternative to this manual paper processing system was the installation of a 10-user OptiDoc™ imaging system. This was a turnkey solution that included computer hardware, software, installation and training. The total cost for the project and system investment was 49% less than the current manual maintenance and storage costs that were noted above.

The end result was a 6-month return on their investment (ROI), substantial on-going savings, and improved efficiencies.

 

Case Study #3

Merging hospitals is an overwhelming task. Managing the paperwork for these newly merged hospitals presented the staff at a large mid-Atlantic medical center's Central Business Office (CBO) with a paperwork nightmare. In this healthcare system, a CBO is responsible for all of the billing, claim forms and collections for all the hospitals that comprise a particular CBO group.

Prior to their decision to install a Document Imaging System, the corporate office of the parent organization conducted a competitive bid process for a "Preferred Imaging Vendor." Several companies were invited to submit system specifications and quotations. Advanced Technology Services' OptiDoc™ was awarded Preferred Vendor status based on performance, features and price.

To avoid having file cabinets everywhere, and not be able to find anything, the hospital CBO began installing the OptiDoc™ Document Imaging System before completion of the five-hospital merger. By starting with all of the records in the OptiDoc™ system, the potential for lost files was eliminated. The initial installation was for 20 users. Since this time, the hospital CBO has upgraded and expanded their system to over 150 users and 4 scanners. They later added remote access viewing stations at all the medical facilities they service. OptiDoc's scalability and flexible concurrent licensing program has made upgrades and expansions smooth and easy.

OptiDoc's  easy to customize features allow all of their UB-92 claims and detail billings to be automatically captured, parsed, and indexed nightly without user intervention. This allows peak system performance during regular business hours.

Not surprisingly, after the installation of OptiDoc™ , the CBO experienced a significant reduction in their Accounts Receivable Aging: both in the dollar amount and the number of days accounts remain unpaid. the CBO is saving money on paper, paper storage, and filing supplies. Their facility is enjoying more usable (revenue generating) space because they have eliminated filing cabinets. The staff appreciates having instant access to the files they require.

Since the installation of OptiDoc™ , the hospital group has not had to write off an unpaid claim because they cannot locate all of the paperwork for the disputed claim. Since it is estimated that 10% of all files are lost or misplaced, with their 3.5 million records, that would be 350,000 missing files. Since the installation of OptiDoc™ , there have not been any lost or misplaced files. Productivity has increased because the staff is no longer "roaming around chasing lost files."

Today, well over 3.5 million active records are on their OptiDoc™ system. New records, which are about 6 to 7 pages each, are entered into the OptiDoc™ system at a rate of about 120,000 per month.

The performance of OptiDoc™ at this hospital CBO is just one example of why Advanced Technology Services' OptiDoc™ document imaging solutions gain "Preferred Vendor" status in the healthcare industry.