Why Remote Work is Not the New Normal
As we all struggle with Zoom/WebEx fatigue, Microsoft Teams/Slack overload, and months of home office background noise (dogs, kids, vacuums etc.), a very common discussion is whether this is the new normal. I have had this conversation with colleagues, friends, and family (ironically, largely over Zoom). My perspective is that this shift to fully distributed teams is not the new normal. It has been happening for years – all COVID did was accelerate it.
Now to be fair, my perspective is shaped in large part by my experience over the past few years. I have worked for healthcare software companies that had shifted to distributed teams with hundreds of employees with no offices. Those experiences showed me that distributed teams can be incredibly effective – but it takes the right software solutions and intentional focus to make it successful. I hadn’t been planning on seeing entire Health Systems move to fully distributed teams, but here we are 5 months later, and I am beginning to realize that Health Systems (particularly HIM and Lab Departments) may NEVER return to co-located work environments.
Admittedly, I am a bit worried about how effectively an office focused Health System could pivot to a completely distributed world.
Ok, I was wondering if it was going to be a total disaster.
But it does NOT have to be a disaster.
Extract Systems solves this very problem for Health Systems – To understand how Extract Systems solves this problem we must look back to what it was like prior to COVID. HIM and Lab Departments for years have operated the same – teams of people barcoding, labeling, prepping, scanning, indexing, abstracting, Q/A medical records and lab results. It was a requirement for co-located workers to perform these manual and highly labor-intensive workflows. The most effective HIM and Lab Departments ran like an assembly line, using antiquated processes (counting pages, timing staff, etc.) to be efficient. These processes do NOT work in the new norm. This is where Extract Systems solves the problem.
Extract Systems: Sweeps fax machines, allows staff to scan on the floors of hospitals or at clinics using Multi-Function Devices or small scanners that are most likely already in place.
Extract Systems: Does NOT require staff to prep these documents with labels, barcodes, or separator sheets. They simply as I like to say, “you scan and go.”
Extract Systems: Takes those documents and runs them through our Artificial Intelligence and NLP to identity the patient, the document types, the indexing level (patient, encounter, order), and key DISCRETE data that needed to be sent to your EMR – all without any prepping by health systems staff that is on the hospital floors or within the clinics.
Extract Systems: Sends those documents to a verifier/indexer to quickly look at documents and then release to the EMR. Those indexers could be at home in a secure/safe environment. Our technology not only allows for a fully distributed team BUT also improves TAT (often under a few hours from fax/scan), accuracy (over 99%), and lowers the overall staffing necessary for this process (a true labor Return on Investment) because the Extract Systems’ technology is doing the work now. For many of our Health Systems, the Extract solution identifies the patient, document type, indexing level, lab values that would need to be manually entered at over 95% RECOGNITION. What that means is that your staff is only “working” 5% of the scanned/faxed images. Think about that, your staff could potentially only have to truly work 5% of all your medical records and lab results.
Extract Systems Dashboards: Track employee productivity, QA accuracy, image counts, images per hour, TAT, and many more KPI’s. This allows HIM/Lab leadership to keep staff accountable and have insight into their department like they never had before.
So what’s next in your distributed team journey?
I strongly believe that to enable your teams to work more effectively and collaboratively you need to invest in solutions like Extract Systems. I can NOT overstate how much value a platform like Extract can bring your team.
COVID has presented us with historic challenges – but there are so many opportunities here for us too. We can improve how we did things in the past; we can implement cutting edge technology and embrace the benefits of distributed teams. Please reach out if you’d like to learn more.
