HealthyData Blog
In healthcare, there are so many regulations and technologies to stay current on. In our HealthyData blog, you will read everything from CMS meaningful use to EMR news, clinical best practices and QAPI program initiatives.
In theory, centralizing your incoming documents seems like a grand idea. You have a core group of people who do things consistently, know the documents and are managed by a single department.
The leading voices in healthcare are talking about the next big thing on the horizon. That would be CHR (Comprehensive Health Record). But what about the unfinished business that still exists for healthcare records? How do you incorporate the data from incoming external documents that bog down clinics and hospitals? This data comes from faxes, paper, and scanning workflows.
For many years, healthcare organizations all over the country have been transitioning from paper charts to electronic health records. From large hospitals to small clinics, almost everyone has adopted an EHR system to manage the care of their patient population. The shift to an electronic record comes with a number of benefits: increased speed of diagnosis, easier collaboration among care teams, better trending of vitals and test results. One big misconception of this transition is that paper charts and documents are a thing of the past and are no longer a concern.
On Wednesday, September 20, the CMS published an RFI requesting feedback "on a new direction to promote patient-centered care and test market-driven reforms that empower beneficiaries as consumers, provide price transparency, increase choices and competition to drive quality, reduce costs, and improve outcomes." Wait. That sounds very familiar, doesn't it? Isn't this what the Affordable Care Act, Meaningful Use, PQRS, MIPS, and a number of other initiatives have tried (or are still trying) to accomplish?
Patients feel that they aren’t getting quality care from their physicians. They are being incorrectly diagnosed because they simply aren’t getting more than 15-minutes with their physicians. Their questions aren’t being answered, but instead being directed towards nurses. Patients are feeling more and more like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, on a journey to the Emerald City to find the Wizard and ask the for help.
Physician burnout is at an extremely high rate. Doctors and nurses everywhere are expected to keep up with management changes, new hospital mandates, technology in procedures, all the while keeping their clinical care first-class. I’ve read countless articles about predictions that the burnout rate will rise
Because our headquarters are in Madison, WI and many of our valuable customers are also Epic clients, we cannot help but notice when Epic has one of its major user events (UGM and XGM). Known by the “outside world” mostly for their fun and wild themes, and enjoyed by the non-invited at the “after parties” throughout the city, they are famous for filling up all the hotels and bringing a bit of chaos to our incredible city.
The benefits of an Enterprise-wide fax/scan handling solution in healthcare is part three of a series. If you haven't read Part One and Part Two, read them now! While the benefits listed in our previous posts of this series can increase efficiency, a truly good enterprise fax and scanned document handling solution is one that can automate as much of the process as possible.
