If you haven’t already, you may find it helpful to read our previous articles on migrating to MEDITECH Expanse and what to expect with your faxing and report distribution solution, Communication Director (found here and here). In addition to considering changes and timelines, when moving to MEDITECH Expanse it’s also a good time to consider optimizing your faxing, report and document workflows to see where you might be able to add efficiencies, save costs and implement standardized workflows across your organization.
For those of you already on MEDITECH Expanse, check out these beneficial solutions.
Virtualization
The first area to consider is virtualization. If you’re on an old version of Communication Director you’ll need to upgrade to the Communication Director 4 platform and you might want to look at virtualization. We have a couple of options for virtual telephony:
Fax over IP (FoIP) software
Cloud faxing which provides true virtualization (no telephony)
With cloud faxing you can either completely replace Fax over IP or go with a hybrid system where you just use cloud faxing for numbers that may have trouble over traditional or FoIP telephony. Cloud faxing has the ability to manage some of these problem numbers (rural areas, etc.) that traditional faxing isn’t capable of doing.
Inbound fax management
Customers migrating to MEDITECH Expanse may want to consider expanding their Communication Director capabilities to include managing inbound faxing. Inbound faxing with Communication Director allows you to route incoming faxes paperlessly and without a physical fax machine. Inbound faxes can either be routed to an email or a folder location. You can specify the email address or folder location by the number dialed or the number the fax was sent from.
Document filing to the MEDITECH Patient Chart
Another solution customers may want to consider is a Forward Advantage product called RapidFiler™. RapidFiler™ further expands the paperless initiative by creating an electronic document workflow to the MEDITECH Echart without needing to print or scan the document. If you choose to leverage Inbound Fax, Communication Director can drop incoming faxes into a folder that’s managed by RapidFiler™. Our integration with the Data Repository and ECM Filer makes it simple for us to get these documents into the patient chart.
With RapidFiler™ and its connection to MEDITECH Expanse:
Providers can be automatically notified via MEDITECH Workload messages of new documents filed to the patient chart
Details like the prescribing provider, their specialty and the order category can be added to the document for easy identification
Bed Stat for MEDITECH Bed Board
MEDITECH Expanse includes Bed Board functionality and adding the Forward Advantage solution Bed Stat® can help simplify Bed Board updates. Bed Stat® is a simple telephony interface that allows your Environmental Services group to use the telephone in a patient room to update bed status within the MEDITECH Bed Board. End users do not need to know how to use MEDITECH or even have access to MEDITECH. They simply follow the promotes and key in numbers on the phone to automatically update bed status within Bed Board.
The takeaway
Working to make your move to MEDITECH Expanse as beneficial as possible is a huge undertaking. We’d love to help you leverage your investment in Expanse and Communication Director to meet your goals.
Reach out with any questions. We’re happy to help!
