Filing inbound documents into the Echart is a challenge for many MEDITECH hospitals. Typical processes involve printing, scanning, and manipulating faxes before associating them with patient records. This wastes valuable time and resources, which was the case for Summit Pacific Medical Center after it migrated to MEDITECH 6.1.
This critical access facility in Elma, Washington is primarily an outpatient center, and it had been using a third-party charting solution to handle the more than 300 inbound faxes it receives per day. Summit Pacific required assistance migrating its existing charts and other data from its old system into MEDITECH, but it also needed a new solution to manage these inbound documents.
Forward Advantage helped on both accounts, and the facility is now successfully using its new RapidFiler™ solution to streamline the filing of inbound faxes into MEDITECH’s Echart. The results speak for themselves – Summit Pacific has reduced the number of employees managing inbound faxes and scanned documents by more than 50 percent. As the system has evolved, RapidFiler™ has also helped the facility remove much of the document handling responsibilities from the clinical groups over to the HIM team, freeing up time for patient care.
Complete services from a vendor who knows MEDITECH
Summit Pacific hired Engage, an IT service provider, to manage the MEDITECH migration and host the software. Engage has a long, working relationship with Forward Advantage and knows that, as a MEDITECH collaboration partner, it develops solutions to help with information delivery to and from the HCIS. Rick Hansen, Assistant Director of IT at Engage, was using Forward Advantage’s Document Imaging and Scanning Conversion (DISC) services for the migration when he learned about the new RapidFiler solution. “Forward Advantage’s Communication Director is a solid solution for delivering documents and other information out of the MEDITECH EMR,” says Hansen.
Gain efficiency and reduce paper with RapidFiler™
RapidFiler™ can file documents from multiple sources and systems; however, there must be a process for dropping a file onto the hospital’s server. Goshen uses MEDITECH Client/Server in the hospital, and its physician practices use NextGen. In this case, Goshen’s physicians have two options for sending documents to the hospital. They can either export files directly from their NextGen EMR or fax the documents to the hospital. Both options place the documents on the hospital’s server, after which, the files are managed by RapidFiler™. “We have only two or three persons monitoring the RapidFiler™ inbox for new files,” continues Plank. “If an appointment has already been scheduled, then the order is simply sent to MEDITECH. If it hasn’t yet been scheduled, then the order is renamed and sent to a different folder where the scheduler can retrieve it and send it to MEDITECH. There is no printing and scanning involved. It’s very time efficient with few steps, and this gives us the consistency and reliability we needed.”
“RapidFiler™ now lets us put inbound documentation into the EMR to become truly paperless. With any MEDITECH implementation, we recommend Forward Advantage, because we can trust them to do exactly what we need them to do in a MEDITECH environment.” - Rick Hansen, Assistant Director of IT at Engage
A solid return on investment
Hansen is confident that RapidFiler™ will produce impressive savings for the facility. “When you consider the amount of time that clinicians spent handling paper and the fax traffic that comes through Summit Pacific, they are going to save a lot of time,” concludes Hansen. “The manpower it took to move that amount of paper around could never be paid for at the same level as just hitting a submit button. They used to be drowning in paper, and now they don’t have to print anymore. There used to be more than twenty people filing documents into charts, and now there’s only three to four for most inbound document handling tasks.”
“We work closely with MEDITECH to develop solutions that fill any gaps,” concludes Kevin Frazier, Manager of Client Services at Forward Advantage. “MEDITECH recognized a need to help organizations bring external documents into the Echart for a more streamlined workflow, and RapidFiler™ does exactly that. Summit Pacific is achieving some great results, and we look forward to helping other organizations save time and money.”
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