The paper crisis: from hospitals to medical practices.
Hospitals, not unlike physician practices, are faced with an increasing burden of managing piles of hard copy documents including insurance forms, requests for information, and advance directives. Healthcare organizations are moving to transform paper-based forms and documents into digitized files in order to save time and money and to have those documents available at a moment's notice. The cost of these document management/imaging systems can be easily justified with the significant savings of resources realized from the implementation of these systems. This article illustrates the enormity of the "paper problem" in healthcare and outlines just a few of the required processes that could be improved with the use of automated document management/imaging systems.
Park
Gregory
G
DB Technology, LLC, 60 Walnut Avenue, Clark, NJ 07066, USA. greg@dbtech.com
Neaveill
Rodney S
RS
D022126:Access to Information; D005568:Forms and Records Control / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011216:Practice Management, Medical / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014481:United States