Although the doctors’ attention is devoted to delivering excellent patient care, they recognize that if the medical group’s finances aren’t in order, their ability to continue serving patients is compromised. Therefore, they’ve charged their business office with employing the best people, processes and technology to optimize the revenue cycle and ensure the profitability of the practice.

Recession Brings Reimbursement Challenges

“The tough economy and changing California regulations have made it more and more difficult to collect payment in a timely manner,” explains Sue Kruger, Office Manager at Tri City. “Medicare and Medi-Cal pay only a fraction of the fee for emergency services, people who’ve lost their jobs and their health insurance oftentimes can’t pay for their care and private payers sometimes drag their heels.”

She notes that the group’s physicians treat an average of 6,000-7,000 patients a month. In terms of Tri City’s revenue:

• 27% comes from Medicare patients.
• 17-18% comes from Medi-Cal.
• A little over half comes from private insurers and self-pay accounts.

“Our employees have to work much harder to collect the same percentage of payment they did three or four years ago,” says Kruger. “If we didn’t have a paperless system, we’d absolutely have had to hire more staff.”

Integrating Content Management with Practice Management

After transitioning to a new practice management system—CPU’s MED/FM—in 2003, Tri City began thinking about how to get even more value out of that system. When CPU introduced an integration with Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM), Tri City jumped on board.

“Handling paper was a big expense that slowed our staff down,” says Kruger. “Our doctors recognized that purchasing Laserfiche would pay off in terms of staff productivity.”

J.R. Juiliano, Tri City’s IT Manager, explains, “We scan everything that’s related to patient encounters into Laserfiche. This includes demographic information, dictations, EOBs and correspondence from insurance companies.”

He notes that the hospital sends information to the medical group via an FTP site. “In the past, we just printed everything onsite.”

This, of course, was problematic on many levels:

• It was expensive.
• It was difficult to store.
• It was tough to retrieve in a timely manner.

“We have to keep patient information for seven years,” says Juiliano. “We used to rent four storage units at a facility that’s ten miles away. We kept a year’s worth of records onsite in a big filing room, but somebody had to go over to the storage units at least once a week.”

Kruger adds, “Efficient medical billing depends on keeping people in their seats so they can be productive. Manual tasks like retrieving paper records just aren’t the best use of employees’ time.”

Today, Tri City automates the document capture, indexing and filing processes with the following tools:

• Laserfiche Snapshot converts the electronic documents from the hospital’s FTP site into TIFF images and processes them using Laserfiche Quick Fields, a high-volume document capture and processing tool that automatically extracts metadata from the documents and files them in the Laserfiche repository—no printing or scanning required.
• Laserfiche Quick Fields also scans and processes paper EOBs and correspondence from insurance companies. Using optical character recognition (OCR), Quick Fields converts the scanned images into editable and searchable text, extracts metadata and files the documents in the repository.
• Laserfiche Import Agent captures and processes electronic faxes.

Verifiers, coders and payment entry staff work with dual screens, so they’re able to view a document on one screen while performing data entry into MED/FM on the other. With the MED/FM integration, documents are automatically attached to the appropriate patient records in the practice management system. When employees type a number into a specific field in MED/FM, Laserfiche opens the corresponding document. This ensures that employees don’t have to launch Laserfiche or toggle between screens to retrieve the documents they require.

Kruger explains that the integration keeps her staff in their seats. “Laserfiche makes our staff so efficient that we haven’t had to hire more people. In fact, we haven’t even replaced everyone who’s left.”

Visibility = Productivity

Documents—whether scanned or electronically imported—are time-stamped when they enter the Laserfiche repository so that the management team can measure staff productivity. Kruger explains, “If something comes in at eleven but doesn’t get finished until 4:30 pm, I can go to the person and ask, ‘What were you doing for those five and a half hours?’”

Juiliano appreciates how easy it is to run and store reports in Laserfiche. With Laserfiche Audit Trail, a monitoring and reporting tool, Tri City can create summaries of all actions taken on a particular document or record, making it much easier to prove compliance with HIPAA. “We can see who changed what when, where and why,” he explains.

In terms of other types of reports, Juliano says, “We run a lot of reports—collections reports, month-end reports, weekly reports. Even if we don’t run the report in Laserfiche, we store it there, which makes it easy to access and compare historical data with present trends.”

Lisa Newland, Tri City’s Assistant Manager, notes that the group’s RAC audits have gone smoothly thanks to Laserfiche’s instant search-and-retrieval capabilities. “Being able to instantly pull the information the RAC auditors want to see makes life so much easier than digging through filing cabinets or storage boxes.”

All in all, says Kruger, “Laserfiche is a great product. I don’t know how we ever got along without it.”

The company faced four major challenges:

• Storage: Lack of space in the office for filing cabinets cost the company $650 a month to rent storage sheds. Temperatures inside the sheds often topped 110 degrees, degrading documents and discouraging retrieval by accounting employees.
• Decentralized Files: Every vehicle tow resulted in the creation of documents by multiple departments, each with their own filing methods—which meant accounting employees had to contact at least three departments to complete a vehicle file. From gathering vehicle photos from the sales department and inspections from the vehicle storage facility to tracking down titles in the title department, staff spent more time searching than billing.
• Security: Transferring files among departments compromised security and led to a proliferation of outdated copies.
• Customer Service: Spread-out storage and misfiled contracts made it difficult to deliver towing contracts to customers by 2:00 p.m. on the day following a tow, as outlined in vendor contracts.

“The vehicle could sometimes be moved to another storage or auction facility, and sometimes the files would not get to the new vehicle storage location,” notes Sheila Gallegos, project manager at United Road Towing.

The company put out a request for proposals for an enterprise content management (ECM) product that could:

• Quickly and easily scan documents.
• Read vehicle barcodes and file documents with minimal human effort.
• Perform quality checks on barcoded scans.

After reviewing RFP responses, United Road Towing saw that Laserfiche could easily set a company-wide standard to transition it away from inefficient paper-based processes.

“Laserfiche was the easiest to understand and the most user-friendly by far. Quick Fields and Workflow sessions were doing most the work, instead of our staff,” says Gallegos. “Most importantly, Laserfiche was an enterprise software solution, whereas the other vendors had to piece together other products to create the solution we were looking for.”

Gallegos led a three-month installation and in-depth training process which brought 73 employees in seven departments and seven locations—as well as 23 vendors—onto the Laserfiche system.

“Laserfiche has helped us streamline our processes, and it also helps us make sure that the processes are standardized from location to location,” she says.

Giving the Green Light to Better Records Management

The first step for United Road Towing was standardizing the documentation process from the time a vehicle hitches to a tow truck to when it leaves the tow lot—which brought immediate improvements in customer service and employee efficiency.

A custom integration between Quick Fields, Workflow and the company’s towing software now takes data from vehicle barcodes, driver invoices and customer-submitted documents across many departments for cradle-to-grave records management.

Because the towing software doesn’t contain an open database, the company worked with Laserfiche to create a custom Workflow script with an HTTP post. The script automatically pulls information from the towing software to fill in additional data in Quick Fields.

As outlined below, records management is now much simpler and more consistent:

• When the company tows a vehicle, the truck driver places a barcode sticker on the vehicle to identify it in the vehicle inventory and places a barcode sheet in the storage reports.
• Storage facility staff scans the barcode sheets into Laserfiche.
• Quick Fields reads the barcodes, places the inventory number into a field and saves the storage report in the Laserfiche repository.
• The custom Workflow script runs a session that searches the towing database using the barcode. Quick Fields then fills in additional template fields with retrieved information about the vehicle, such as the vehicle’s make, model, year and VIN number, as well as customer information and invoice and payment dates.
• When all fields are complete, the Workflow session electronically files the documents by tow date.

With the automated system, the average user can process five documents a minute. Each day, the company as a whole can easily process 1,500 customer documents and 500 driver invoices.

WebLink Revs Up Customer Service

The integration has also improved the availability of customer documents within the contractual one-day grace period. Prior to Laserfiche, one employee would collect 200 documents a day from the accounting department, scan the documents into a network folder, rename all the documents, move the documents to an FTP folder and then make the documents available to customers on a Website in PDF form. This time-intensive process often resulted in late documents and $75 in vendor fines for each delayed delivery.

With Laserfiche WebLink, an automated process ensures that customers can view documents on the same day of the tow—many hours before the deadline.

• When a towed vehicle is added to the storage inventory, storage facility employees scan documents from the drivers along with customer-supplied paperwork like driver licenses into a network folder.
• From the network folder, Quick Fields brings the documents into the Laserfiche repository and identifies the documents by reading their barcodes.
• The custom Workflow session retrieves the vehicle information from the towing software using the barcodes, and Quick Fields completes the template fields.
• The accounting office then e-mails digital invoice copies to customers.
• Quick Fields files the documents and automatically makes relevant documents, such as storage reports, driver licenses, private party impounds and pre-tow pictures of the vehicles, available for customers via WebLink.
• Customers can view the files related to their tow with an assigned, secure login.

This fast flow of information empowers United Road Towing as well as the customer. The customer may view the document on the same day as the tow, and United Road Towing now:

• Saves half a pallet of paper (50 boxes) per month.
• Eliminates $650 a month in off-site storage costs.
• No longer needs to train storage employees on a formerly laborious customer service process.

“In the past, a dedicated staff person spent eight hours completing this process. Now, it only takes 30 minutes to verify all the documents that were scanned,” says Gallegos.

Overhauled Processes Bring Big Benefits

United Road Towing counts centralized data as the most basic gain from Laserfiche, which has completely eliminated the company’s reliance on a carrier to move documents from remote sites to the main office.

The rewards multiply when it comes to customer satisfaction. “Now anyone who answers the phone can answer inquiries about the status of a vehicle by doing a simple search in Laserfiche,” notes Gallegos. “We used to have to transfer calls to the storage lot where the vehicle was stored.”

The company’s five storage facilities follow the same procedures, but the company can shift tasks around depending on the available employees and their skill levels. For example, when a customer calls requesting paperwork from their insurance company to release the vehicle to a body shop or the police department inquires after proof of ownership forms, dispatch staff can now look up the related information in Laserfiche instead of relying on lot staff.

More employees can be cross-trained to complete work in multiple departments. Whenever the staff has downtime, employees input and check metadata in Laserfiche from any documents that don’t include barcodes. Recently, the company even changed its file clerk positions into quality assurance roles.

With Audit Trail, Gallegos can run a report that outlines which employees have accessed certain documents. Every month, she uses the report to check productivity and conduct any back-training
for employees based on their efficiency.

United Road Towing is close to completing an expansion to the corporate office in Illinois. Instead of spending money on overnight mailing costs, the company will now digitally send Department of Transportation documents to corporate employees via WebLink.

Other plans for growing United Road Towing’s Laserfiche system include:

• Using the Laserfiche Mobile iPad app to digitize the signed agreement binders that tow drivers currently carry in paper form. Capturing and storing the most current authorization forms will ensure that drivers remain in compliance with local regulations.
• Working with municipalities to write laws that standardize the authorizations needed to tow a vehicle and giving cities access to signed agreements via WebLink.
• Expanding the Laserfiche system to 11 additional sites to further standardize procedures and bring cradle-to-grave records management to the rest of the company.

“Laserfiche has helped to ensure that processes are consistent throughout the company while allowing us to improve processes and gain efficiencies,” Gallegos says. “It’s one of the best investments we’ve ever made.”

Guidelines that apply:

• The promotion applies to both Avante upgrades for existing customers and new purchases for first-time buyers.
• New customers purchasing Web Access or Audit Trail and existing customers who use Web Access or Audit Trail in their systems will receive free software costs for Web Access and Audit Trail with their free licenses.
• All customers must purchase full-price LSAP coverage for new licenses.

This promotion is open to both domestic and international customers. Contact your VAR or account manager today!

Implementing ahead of inclement weather

Meyer says the move toward ECM was a proactive one. “For us, it was the general idea that we could increase efficiency by saving time and money while continuing to improve client service that first got us interested in an ECM. Also, the disaster recovery aspect really attracted us.”

As both an advisor and the firm’s IT Manager, Meyer brought a unique perspective to the search for an ECM. “Naturally, being in the financial services industry, auditing, security and compliance were simply ‘must haves.’ After that, flexibility and scalability were important to us in an ECM—we wanted a system that could grow with us over time as our business evolved,” he says.

The firm looked at several ECM solutions, including cloud-based options, before deciding on Laserfiche. “Laserfiche was the most feature-rich of the solutions we looked at in terms of the comprehensive functionality it offered,” he recalls. “Quick Fields, Bar Code Plug-In, Zone OCR, Audit Trail, Workflow—these were all appealing because they either directly or indirectly addressed our ‘must haves,’” he says. At the same time, Meyer continues, Laserfiche would improve day-to-day operations. “We wanted to reduce costs, and we found from talking to other firms using Laserfiche and reading about the software that, first, Laserfiche saves time—employees spend less time searching for documents. Second, it saves on paper and printing costs; and third, it saves on storage costs of client files and other documents.”

Last, but not least, Meyer adds, Laserfiche is a name synonymous with ECM in the financial services industry. “Having a tried-and-true, trusted name in document management was important to us as well,” he says. “The system was already approved by our broker dealer, Commonwealth Financial Network, which was also a plus.”

Laserfiche’s impact was felt not long after implementation. “The savings in time and paper realized after just one quarter was significant,” Meyer recalls. “We used to scan a copy of each quarterly report to a PDF using a multi-function copy machine (MFP). Someone would have to manually rename and file each report. At that time, we also kept a duplicate copy on file. Using Quick Fields and the Bar Code Plug-In, we were able to scan all of our reports and have them renamed and filed instantly. We also eliminated the need to keep a physical copy.”

Soon, hundreds of client files dating back to 1985 were scanned into Laserfiche, eliminating the need for several bookshelves and filing cabinets. While Meyer admits it was “a paradigm shift” for some employees to move from a paper-based system to a paperless one, after they experienced how they could literally file things automatically and then find them instantly, they embraced the concept completely. The transition brought peace of mind—and cost savings.

“There’s a reassurance in knowing that all of our important documents are stored electronically and backed up off-site, ensuring access to the data even if something were to happen to our office,” Meyer says, adding, “employees now have the option of accessing documents remotely [over Fure’s secured network], so they can work from anywhere.”

A key component to true enterprise consolidation of the firm’s information was working with reseller Cities Digital to integrate Laserfiche with CRM solution Junxure. “Before Laserfiche, we used to have some digital files in the CRM, some paper documents in a large client file and some documents in different filing cabinets; it was very disjointed,” he recalls. “Now, with the two systems integrated, we have one centralized location for statements, account paperwork, estate plans, correspondence and all relevant material related to a client.”

Automating compliance with Workflow

In addition, Laserfiche Workflow automates several business processes—chief among them logging client letters for compliance review. “We no longer need to make copies, depend on a person to manually log each letter, compile all letters into a binder for review and signatures or fax the letters every week,” Meyer says of the familiar process. “We used to create three copies of every single client letter we sent out. Now, we simply scan one copy right at our MFP, which Laserfiche Import Agent OCRs and applies metadata to before moving it into Laserfiche.”

Then, Workflow renames the document and applies the correct metadata by referencing Fure’s Junxure SQL database. The document is then routed to the correct folders automatically, which a Fure senior advisor is then able to review and sign—all electronically. “Once the workflow is completed, it even e-mails the signed document to Commonwealth’s compliance department,” Meyer adds. “Import Agent and Workflow, with some custom scripts built by Cities Digital and an electronic signature pad, have taken that process completely paperless with one touch of the button on our MFP.”

Audit preparation has likewise benefitted from the centralization and automation—utilizing functionality as simple as a robust search and as comprehensive as Audit Trail. “Laserfiche allows us to pull the necessary documents together for an auditor extremely quickly instead of going through file cabinets,” Meyer says. “The security and auditing of documents is also important as we are able to prove the integrity of our documents; any activity or change with a document is right there.”

The Laserfiche advantage: weather-proofed is ‘future-proofed’

For a family-oriented firm like Fure, the little improvements add up as well. “We can train new hires much more quickly—the system is that intuitive. We’re not having to give tours of file drawers or a bank of cabinets anymore.”

Meyer says he can recommend Laserfiche on two levels: “From an IT standpoint, the program is very easy to administer, and the flexibility of Laserfiche and the highly customizable security options allowed me to tailor the program to fit our needs as far as setting up template fields, adding users and ensuring compliance,” he says. “From a user standpoint, Laserfiche allows our financial planning team to access client documents and pinpoint what we need, when we need it, which translates into more time spent with clients and generating revenue and less time on tracking things down. That’s the real benefit—the reclaimed time and effort.”

Still, for all the operational benefits he can identify, Meyer credits the long-term value of Laserfiche to fitting so well with the firm’s holistic business philosophy. “Having a powerful ECM system like Laserfiche allows our business to adjust to the changing environment that many small businesses in any industry face,” he says.

“The more agile and flexible your technology system can be, the more ‘future-proofed’ you can become,” Meyer adds. “While it’s very hard to predict exactly where compliance, government regulations, clients’ needs and technology will be in the future, Laserfiche allows us to prepare as much as possible. Staying on course, no matter which way the wind blows, means having to adapt as conditions change without compromising on the final destination.”

Before then, IT Director Lewis Paskin recalls PBC’s paper-based processes becoming overly cumbersome as the company grew, while escalating costs were adversely affecting profitability. There were shipping costs to receive charts; clerical costs to collate charts; and labor costs to copy, sort, log and distribute charts for coding, data entry and accounts receivable. “Adding to the paper overload were insurance claims that resulted in inbound Explanation of Benefits [EOB], patient payments, receipts, checks and correspondence—all of which needed to be opened, logged, accounted for and dispensed with daily,” Paskin says. “There were also significant paper costs from producing coding sheets for charts, making multiple copies of EOBs and eventually the long term offsite storage costs, as well as the HIPAA concerns that come with having all this copied and ‘travelling’ paper.”

Paskin led an internal committee to assess PBC’s needs in an enterprise content management (ECM) solution and began to search around four key features:

• Security.
• Accessibility.
• Accountability.
• Simplicity of user interface.

“We needed to make sure that billing records were easily retrievable, that protected health information was secure and that we could account for all our documents,” Paskin explains. “But we also needed a solution that was cost-effective and scalable. Our immediate goal was to be able to store billing records electronically, but our long term goal was a completely paperless workflow.”

Finding an ECM solution that fit—and would keep on fitting

PBC’s search soon took them to Laserfiche, and specifically to Laserfiche reseller JPI Data Resource. Paskin, for one, was initially skeptical. “When they said Laserfiche could dynamically create folders and structures as well as automatically extract text from documents, I told them I’d be shocked if it could. But it did,” he laughs.

“The Laserfiche product fulfilled our requirements,” Paskin continues, “but it was how it did it—the fact that it was really simple but also very powerful in terms of processing information—that’s how we knew it made sense for us. We have some of the least technical and most technical people working with our information, sometimes in a similar capacity. So, seeing how a staff member could just drop a document in a scanner and how Quick Fields automatically pulls and files all the metadata, or how Workflow would mean our users wouldn’t have to leave their desks, this was functionality we’d see improvements with immediately.”

Working with JPI’s Joseph Gutierrez, Paskin and his PBC team designed a 20-user Laserfiche system including Audit Trail; Workflow and Quick Fields; Bar Code and Zone OCR; Scan Connect and Snapshot for capture; and set up five different scanning stations. Installation, Paskin notes, was completed in less than a day, while user training took less than three days.

Paskin credits the comprehensive capture methods with making the transition to an automated environment a smooth one. “We’ve found that working with whatever file format a hospital is using with minimal modification is our best way to retrieve data,” Paskin says. “We do a lot of scanning directly into Laserfiche from our hospital clients’ facilities, which makes for a wide differential in chart documents. Some hospitals send charts with barcodes, others use file names, some just send text, but through the various Laserfiche applications we ferret out a way to get the data into the system.”

The biggest improvement, he notes, has been in processing paper. “Staff now simply scan those documents, either separated by bar-coded index sheets or by utilizing Zone OCR, into Laserfiche. Quick Fields reads the patient’s name and ID from the bar codes and automatically indexes the scanned files and fills in all the necessary document metadata.”

The effect was as impressive as it was immediate. “We were able to migrate one of our largest volume clients to a completely paperless environment in less than a week. Then we started bringing our other client applications online,” Paskin says.

Scanning volume soon hit 50,000 pages a day. “We scanned over 200,000 documents containing over 2.5 million pages in just under one year,” he adds.

The process(es) of coding and billing, better and more efficiently

The impact on PBC’s business processes was transformative:

• Laserfiche Import Agent constantly monitors the multiple directories PBC has set up to receive files.
• Laserfiche Quick Fields then extracts and sorts data, which triggers Workflow to route files to the respective departments that need to touch the document before it moves forward and is finally archived.
• If any predefined criterion is missing, Workflow automatically reroutes the record to the appropriate department for further follow up.

Previously, PBC’s coders signed out up to three days’ worth of charts and held them at their desks until coding was completed. Charts were then passed in bulk to the insurance review department, then on to data entry for manual entry to initiate billing before eventually being archived in a file room and sent to an offsite storage facility. Now, PBC coders work and code offsite, accessing information over a secure connection to PBC’s terminal servers.

“An entire team of people no longer need to work in the office—everything’s accessed and managed centrally through Laserfiche,” adds Paskin. As the coders finish a chart, it automatically moves through the workflow to the next department, speeding up and evening out the process from inbound chart to billing.

“We have over 10 different client applications that reside in Laserfiche—five of which are hospital-related, and three that are used by our Accounts Receivable (AR) department to look up claim denials, track work batches and store EOBs. We’re using it in more than five distinct departments including coding, claims processing, AR, finance and Human Resources; it’s our document management back-end for all our lines of business,” Paskin says.

This centralized control has improved oversight to monitor productivity as well as to ensure HIPAA compliance. Using Audit Trail, a document ID number can trace the file’s history. “We can see who changed what—and when—for every document,” says Paskin.

Another benefit, Paskin adds, is the ability to use SAP Crystal Reports tools to help monitor PBC’s workflow. “We have about 15–20 reports that go out daily—one of which is referred to as our ‘bucket report.’ When we receive a medical chart, getting it coded and billed quickly is key to cash flow. The bucket reports tell us how many charts are sitting in a user’s folder. Because all this data is in a single, centralized repository, it’s easy to create reports,” says Paskin. “I credit Joe and JPI with understanding our business well enough to show us how we should have our information structured.”

Automating the billing process itself, Paskin notes, “works essentially the same way it does in the Laserfiche brochure that JPI showed us initially. Again, everything’s in a single and straightforward database. We simply wrote Java and Web-related scripts to pull the account number, CPT and diagnosis codes to automate the actual billing process. Of course, there was controlled testing for about two weeks before we went live, but that was it.”

Now, PBC’s business processes are synonymous with Laserfiche—and significantly improved. Paskin points to processing the hundreds of charts sent to PBC on any given day. “That used to take three employees a full day to process manually; now it takes one person about 15 minutes.

“Our original vision was a paperless workflow, and we’ve pretty much achieved that. We have over 800,000 documents representing 10 million pages, and that all happened within the past 2 ½ years,” he adds. “We have redeployed 60% of our FTE’s required to produce a claim, and no longer need a night shift to keep up with the workload. Considering how far we’ve come, it’s pretty amazing.”

For more information, read Laserfiche’s ECM for Third Party Medical Billing brochure.

Read more about PBC.

• Municipio de Monterrey: Expert Data expanded the city’s 15-user Avante system by implementing Quick Fields, Workflow, Audit Trail and Web Access to automate check and invoice processing in its Accounting Department.
• Grupo Materias Primas: This leading manufacturer of ceramic minerals chose Laserfiche over a competing Docuware solution because of Quick Fields Real Time Look-up’s ability to access a third-party database to meet compliance and functionality requirements.
• Grupo Agora: Expert Data closed a 15-user Avante deal with this prominent construction firm by developing an integration with its contract management software, and is now utilizing Web Access to deploy the system remotely.

According to Gasi Fayad, CEO of Expert Data, this recent pattern of success has been the result of embracing a consultative sales strategy that emphasized solutions, not products. “By focusing extensively on discovery and needs assessment, we’ve been able to tailor our demos in such a way to show that Laserfiche is a comprehensive answer to the problems a prospective client is facing,” he says.

“At the same time, we’ve been able to create a lot of opportunity, both with new and existing clients, to determine where Laserfiche can be more actively deployed to enhance and streamline business processes, and that’s also proven quite successful,” Fayad adds.

The confidential information contained in a special education student’s file is vital to CSISD’s special education teachers. “It’s important that those working with students in Special Services understand what modifications need to be in place and what each student needs to succeed in class. That information resides in our students’ files, so maintaining them properly is a top priority for us.”

With an overflowing amount of paperwork, stored offsite as well as taking up space onsite, keeping these confidential records organized, secure and easily accessible was a massive problem. “I used to get paper cuts and a strained neck from sorting through boxes for hours to satisfy a request for information,” says Boller.

Costly Paper Trails

“We’re required to keep our students’ files for seven years after they leave our district,” Boller explains. As a result, the department housed thousands of inactive files in offsite storage—costing several thousand dollars a year.

“Annual placement review meeting reports alone can be anywhere from 10-30 pages long. Some students are in the district from age three until age 22, so they get reviewed 18 or 19 times,” Boller explains. “The bulk of content we have to manage, just in our inactive files, is incredible.”

In addition to yearly placement meeting reports, each student’s file includes federally protected information such as:

• Special Education testing (required every three years).
• Medical records.
• Disciplinary information.

To satisfy requests for information, Special Services staff used to go to the warehouse and search through boxes, or, in some cases, warehouse staff would bring 10-15 boxes from the offsite storage room to the department so that staff could sort through them to find the requested information. Once located, the department made copies of the entire file (sometimes hundreds of pages) and paid to mail it to the requesting school district. “At $5 or $6 a package, the cost adds up,” Boller says.

Transition to Technology

After learning about Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) software from an employee in the purchasing warehouse, the Special Services Department acquired bids from two other content management providers and then evaluated the software during demos and presentations. “We needed a solution that would not only keep our records safe and accessible, but would also be easy to use for a variety of staff. Laserfiche was the best fit for our needs,” Boller says.

“At first I was a little skeptical,” she admits, explaining that some of the long-time employees were especially hesitant to switch to digitized content. “But we received lots of help from SMARTfiles, our Laserfiche reseller. Scanning in all the files was faster and easier than I expected, and the end results of using Laserfiche make it well worth the investment of both time and money.”

Secure Access Saves Time

One of the biggest benefits of deploying Laserfiche for CSISD’s Special Services Department is that content is both more secure and easier to share with authorized personnel. “When a dyslexia specialist or a special education teacher needs to access an active record that was previously stored in one of 40 boxes, she’s now able to access that information online, right from her classroom,” Boller explains.

Because only authorized personnel can access the files stored in Laserfiche, confidential information is secure and protected. Plus, Boller says, “With student information in electronic format, it’s so much easier to provide it to new schools and districts if the student moves. The transfer of information is prompt, so students’ services aren’t interrupted.” She notes that smooth, continued service is particularly key to accommodating student needs.

CSISD uses the Texas Education Agency’s state-wide record request system, Texas Records Exchange (TREx), to send and receive student information across the state’s educational system. “We’re now able to export files from Laserfiche to PDFs, then upload them to the TREx system for delivery. We no longer have to scan in pages one by one. It’s so much faster and easier—and it doesn’t tie up the Xerox machines all day!”

In addition, CSISD uses Laserfiche Audit Trail to ease the burden of complying with federal record retention regulations and mandates. “The government can come in and audit us at any time,” says Boller. “Electronic records are much easier to locate thanks to the organized file structure, granular search capability and secure access we get through Laserfiche.”

Prepared for the Unexpected

While Laserfiche is able to reduce CSISD’s paper clutter and provide instant, secure access to student records, Boller brings up another interesting benefit of implementation. “In our region, we have to keep in mind that natural disasters occur. For instance, some schools lost all their paper records when Hurricane Ike came though.”

In order to create new or replacement files for special education students, the students must be retested. Retesting can take anywhere from four to 12 hours—not including the time it takes to do the paperwork. To get a child into the Special Services system, Boller says it can take as long as 60 days.

“Digital files aren’t as fragile as paper,” Boller says. “With Laserfiche, we don’t have to worry that our students will lose ground after a natural disaster.”

Future Plans

Although CSISD’s Special Services Department currently uses Laserfiche mostly for inactive records management, Boller says the department is moving toward managing all active files in Laserfiche. “After seeing what Laserfiche can do, we can’t wait to take it to the next level. Laserfiche has made our jobs more efficient, which in turn helps students—and that’s our main priority.

“Laserfiche allows us to better manage the sheer volume of paperwork we have, but our added needs for confidentiality and easy access make the system essential for Special Services,” she concludes.

• This release of the Laserfiche Server, Client and Web Access includes the latest fixes and performance enhancements, as well as new features such as dynamic fields, enhanced PDF support including native page and text generation, text and dynamic stamps, and improved search options.
• Laserfiche Records Management Edition now includes the full set of 5015.2 revision 3 certification functionality, including several new cutoff instructions, more flexible handling of individual records, briefcase export support and full support via Web Access.
• Laserfiche 8.2 also includes fixes and enhancements to the Laserfiche Administration Console, Snapshot, Scanning, PhotoDocs, the Office Plug-in and Audit Trail, as well as full online help files.

Next steps:

1. Get more information about the release, including the complete list of enhancements and download links.
2. Read the release notes for the Laserfiche 8.2 Client and Server.
3. Read the release notes for Laserfiche Web Access 8.2.
4. Visit support.laserfiche.com for videos, forums, Knowledge Base articles, and more.

• Cardiology
• Dermatology
• Gastroenterology
• General Medicine
• Neonatology
• Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Orthopedics
• Psychiatry

Prior to implementing Laserfiche in 2007, PPS’s manual cash posting process was paper-driven. But from an operational and cost perspective, paper wasn’t a particularly efficient medium for PPS; even assigning the daily distribution of work was time consuming because someone had to manually review that day’s lock box payments and portion them out to the processors.

“At first, we tried implementing a different system to improve the efficiency of our operation,” said Stacy Devine, IT director at PPS. “But we had some security concerns with that system, and it also had a higher cost.”

Soon after, Russ Surette, director of billing operations, mentioned the situation to Mike McDonough at Duplitron, a hardware vendor and Laserfiche VAR that had long provided PPS with printers, scanners, copiers and other electronic devices. “Mike suggested that we take a look at Laserfiche, because it’s so easy to use.”

After doing its due diligence by talking to a number of Laserfiche users, PPS purchased a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system to streamline operational processes and eliminate the need to store paper office documents and training materials.

Leveraging Laserfiche

According to Surette, the use of Laserfiche—in conjunction with a few other initiatives—has helped PPS increase productivity by 20% over the past year, while at the same time increasing gross billings approximately 20%. When one employee left the company, the increased efficiency meant that PPS did not need to fill that position.

Here are a few of the benefits Laserfiche provides:

• Better security of information. “When you’re using paper or a file server, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of changes or restrict people from removing content,” says Devine. “Laserfiche’s security controls allow us to restrict access to folders in the repository by department and user, so that, for example, a claims processor will only see his or her assigned claims. This helps us better protect patient information and more easily comply with HIPAA.”
• Automatic data capture. Laserfiche Quick Fields automates information processing by capturing data from various formats and sorting documents according to custom criteria. For PPS, Quick Fields has simplified payment processing by automatically extracting data such as check number, transaction number and insurance carrier from bank image files and tagging it as metadata in the Laserfiche repository, where the images are stored by date. Surette says, “Before implementing Quick Fields, we had a full-time employee who did nothing but scanning and data entry all day long. Today, we have one part-time employee who scans for about 10 hours a week.”
• Smoother payment processing. After payment information is stored in the repository, Laserfiche Workflow routes it to specific claims processors based on the bank account number/insurance company associated with the payment. After the payment has been processed, Workflow automatically sends the information back to its original folder. When a claims processor is out of the office, Workflow automatically delegates his or her work to an alternate processor. “The distribution of daily work is much easier with Laserfiche,” says Surette. “Nobody has to sort through files to figure out what should go where.”
• Faster follow up. “The optical character recognition (OCR) process available through Laserfiche has made searching so much easier,” says Surette. “In the past, processors would have to look through 200-page documents to find the one paragraph that was relevant to an insurance follow up. OCR makes searching for specific words and phrases within a document easy, and it’s dramatically cut down on the amount of time our processors spend following up on claims.”
• Increased visibility and oversight. Laserfiche Audit Trail monitors, records and reports on system activity, providing the management team at PPS with a comprehensive overview of how quickly payments are processed and the value of the payments processed on any given day. “Laserfiche reporting eliminates the need to check spreadsheets,” says Surette.
• Easy integration with GE Centricity. By serving as integrative middleware that links into GE Centricity, PPS’ practice management system, Laserfiche allows staff members to access information stored in Laserfiche through the click of a button. With the integration, processors can access information in the manner and environment with which they are most comfortable, without toggling back and forth between applications.

Results

“Over the past year, even though one of our employees left and hasn’t been replaced, we’ve increased business by about 20%,” says Surette. “Implementing Workflow has been a huge part of that.”

PPS is, in fact, so satisfied with Workflow that Devine, Surette and Duplitron’s McDonough are planning to do a demo of Workflow at a regional training session for GE Centricity users this fall. “We recommend Laserfiche to other billing companies all the time,” says Surette. “When you’ve got something this good, you can’t just keep it to yourself.”

“Because it took so long to find charts, we always had a large backlog of lab reports, test results, physicians’ notes and other documents we needed to file,” explains Jo Wells, the group’s operations director. “Physicians would become frustrated because charts often didn’t include the most up-to-date information. Our system clearly wasn’t working.”

The organization’s CEO, Todd Blum, first learned about Laserfiche at a meeting of the American Otolaryngology Association, and he immediately saw that it would help staff manage patient charts more effectively. Laserfiche stores both scanned and electronic documents in a central repository, where they’re immediately available to authorized staff members. To help staff get up to speed quickly, Laserfiche includes a number of familiar Windows features, such as right-click menus and flexible folder structures. Perhaps most importantly, Laserfiche readily accommodates additional users and high-volume repository growth, making it easy for organizations to roll the system out to new users, departments and locations.

Prior to scanning documents into the repository, Wells and her colleagues created a Laserfiche folder structure that mirrors the group’s current filing system. Each patient has his or her own Laserfiche folder, and the documents within each folder are organized by type. “Our paper charts had multiple tabs, such as ‘Demographics,’ ‘Office Notes’ and ‘Labs,’” Wells says. “Because staff already knew which documents appeared under which tabs, we decided to reproduce this structure in Laserfiche. Now, staff simply log in to the repository and browse to the documents they need—it’s like working with the paper chart, only much, much faster.”

When staff add a document to the repository, they also apply an electronic template, in which they record such metadata as the patient’s name, physician, account number and date of birth. They can also use templates to record and track more specialized information; for example, the group created a referrals template to capture each referral’s type, its beginning and end dates, and the number of authorized visits. All this metadata proves extremely useful for search purposes, allowing staff to quickly locate all the documents in the repository associated with a certain patient, physician or account.

Wells notes that Laserfiche not only helps staff and physicians simplify everyday tasks—it also helps them provide even better patient care. When patients arrive for an appointment, front desk staff use Laserfiche to quickly verify that the chart contains all the necessary information, from demographics to consent forms to insurance details. Prior to calling patients into the exam room, nurses use Laserfiche to review patients’ allergies, medical history and current medications. When physicians arrive, they review test results, lab reports and notes from previous encounters; they can also easily highlight important details and add notes for future reference. Finally, billing staff use Laserfiche to review insurance information and encounter details, which helps them promptly generate claims and respond to billing-related questions.

In the next phase of the group’s Laserfiche implementation, staff will begin scanning explanation of benefits forms into Laserfiche, further streamlining the collections process. In addition, physicians will create visit notes directly within Laserfiche, making them instantly available to other providers. And the group plans to expand its use of the Audit Trail module, which monitors all user activity in the Laserfiche repository.

Wells is pleased with everything the group has already accomplished, and she looks forward to continued success in the future. “Laserfiche has definitely helped us become more productive, and I’d recommend it to any healthcare organization. It’s clearly one of the best investments we’ve made.”

Kowal Investment Group, LLC is a fee-based financial advisor from Waukesha, WI, that has specialized in financial planning and investment advising for over 35 years. The firm manages nearly $200 million in assets and also hosts a weekly financial advice radio show called “The Retirement Clinic.” But just as baby boomers looking into retirement look to Kowal for advice, Kowal itself began looking to retire its old way of filing paper. “We knew we wanted to move toward the paperless office,” explains Michelle Rossi-Weida, Operations and Compliance Manager for Kowal. “Just in terms of better organization and also the cost savings paying for file space, as well as making people’s jobs easier and more productive.”

For example, she says, an everyday business process like new account opening mandated a flurry of paperwork and duplication, consuming valuable time, space and resources to manage it. “If we had a person opening an account, he would need to fill out a form and then we would copy it; if it was a double-sided form, that meant making two single-sided sheets so we could fax it,” she explains. “Once it was faxable, we would send the forms one at a time to be opened.” Plus, she adds, each file had to be copied at least twice—once for the client and once for the firm’s records. This process created unnecessary duplicates that filled 20 filing cabinets, taking up valuable office space and increasing overhead costs.

At the recommendation of a firm using Laserfiche to manage its information and business processes, Rossi-Weida contacted Patrick Welsch from Laserfiche reseller Cities Digital, Inc. for a demonstration. Working from a short-list of approved vendors handed down by Kowal’s former broker-dealer, Rossi-Weida then whittled it down to four providers, ultimately choosing Laserfiche, she says, for three main reasons: Laserfiche’s ease of integration with ACT!, Kowal’s contact management software; its ease of use; and the fact that the software interface allowed the repository’s folder structure to mimic the filing system firm staff were already used to working with.

One question that did come up in the consideration process was the choice between going with a Web-based hosted solution or a system Kowal would own itself. Rossi-Weida says the fact that the ACT! integration was only an option with the Kowal-owned Laserfiche was a compelling factor. The other reason, says Rossi-Weida, was the peace of mind of knowing the firm’s information was not only safe and secure, but in the firm’s possession. “The biggest issue for us, being an independent firm, is what happens to your information if something happens to that company?” she says. “If something happened to a Web provider whose services we were using, how could we recover that information from them? We feel more secure with the Kowal-owned Laserfiche.”

But as Kowal staff soon found, a system that offers sophisticated security doesn’t have to be complicated for the user. Cities Digital spent a day training the staff and with that, they were off. “We were struck by how easy Laserfiche was to use and how easily we were able to duplicate our old file structure,” says Rossi-Weida. “That was really nice.”

Cities Digital’s LaserACT integration allows users to browse, scan, import and export the client folders stored in Laserfiche from within a tab inside ACT!, which made implementation relatively simple because employees were already familiar with the ACT! interface. Before Laserfiche, whenever an advisor needed information from a file he or she would need to go into ACT! to look up the client record and then ask the client service team to retrieve the paper file to get the rest of the information. Now the advisors can click on a button in ACT! that pulls information from the Laserfiche repository and view all their clients’ information instantly. What once took five to ten minutes of staff time is now done at each advisor’s desk in a matter of seconds. “It’s so simple, even an advisor can do it!” laughs Rossi-Weida.

Having Laserfiche also makes Kowal 100% compliant with SEC regulations, a major concern for firms facing increased regulatory oversight and visits from auditors. Audit Trail allows administrators to regularly review user activity, assess the effectiveness of internal control mechanisms and demonstrate regulatory compliance. Using Laserfiche also expedites audits by producing reports of all the actions taken on a particular document. “Laserfiche makes audits easy,” says Rossi-Weida. “Auditors can come in and sit down at a computer and I don’t have to go grab a bunch of different files. They can just click through everything they want. I think it makes them much more efficient from their standpoint as well.”

Though Rossi-Weida says the firm has yet to face a major audit since implementing Laserfiche, it is reaping the benefits of a progressively paperless environment. “We’ve gotten rid of 20% of our paper processes,” she says. “Before we needed to make two copies of each form so we could send the original to the client. We went from two copies to no copies. It’s great.” She adds the firm will repurpose the space that once housed the filing cabinets into offices for new employees.

In fact, Kowal’s experience with Laserfiche has been so successful, it’s inspired the firm’s new broker-dealer to ask Cities Digital to talk to other advisors. “We were sort of pioneers within the broker-dealer network because they didn’t have a lot of offices that were using electronic storage. They were very impressed,” Rossi-Weida says. “They asked if they could have Cities Digital present to other advisors within the broker dealer.”

Can the “Paper Retirement Clinic” radio show be far behind?

The Investment Dealers Association of Canada (IDA) requires securities firms to verify client signatures when existing clients change their account information. While Credential was complying with this regulatory demand, they were simply running out of space to house all the paper client files required to verify signatures.

“Our staff needed instant access to client information, but we didn’t have space to store all our client files onsite,” remembers Vice President of Operations Ernie Nichiporik.

Mr. Nichiporik and his team began researching digital document management solutions, focusing their efforts on finding a secure, scalable Web-based solution that was still easy to use. “We really wanted a Web-based solution, so external parties could access the system even if they weren’t connected to our network,” he says. “And security features were key—we had to guarantee that our client files were safe and tamper-proof.”

After attending a presentation by IKON Office Solutions, Mr. Nichiporik and his colleagues chose a Laserfiche® digital document management system. “It had everything we needed. It was secure, easy-to-use, cost-effective and didn’t require a lot of time to implement.”

Within seven months, employees were fully benefiting from the new system. “Installation didn’t take long,” Nichiporik says, “and we started realizing benefits quickly. The seven month time frame to full productivity was due to the fact that we imaged all of our existing files, as well as new files coming in.”

Currently, over 60 users, located in four offices over 3,000 miles apart, use the Laserfiche system. Credential has three different business lines, and they store all their client files—including scanned paper documents, faxes and e-mails—in their Laserfiche repository. Documents are easily accessible thanks to templates that store the account number, document type and the department that last worked on the document. Credential also created a folder structure for the six different administration departments that house working documents, so that all company staff can locate documents that haven’t yet been archived in the client’s folder.

To further optimize business processes, Credential implemented several tools to automate document import and storage. Import Agent™ monitors the company’s network folder for new faxes, imports them into the Laserfiche repository and dynamically creates new folders to store them. Quick Fields™ document capture tools automate document scanning and storage, creating the file structure with different templates for each of Credential’s three business lines. The Quick Fields Real Time Lookup module accesses three different SQL databases to retrieve client information from the appropriate business line and automatically fill each scanned document’s template fields with client demographic information.

Staff who only need to view documents retrieve them through WebLink™, a read-only document viewer accessible through their Web browser. Users who have to add additional information to client files use Web Access™, a Web-based thin client that simplifies deployment and support. “Web Access really makes upgrades to the system easier, because we only have to install them on our Web server, instead of on each computer,” Nichiporik says.

“We also have a few ‘power users,’ who use the Windows®-based Laserfiche Client™ to scan and index documents,” he continues. “Using all three modules really fits our needs—and demonstrates the system’s flexibility. Instead of being locked into one option, we chose a combination of options to meet our exact requirements.”

Nichiporik believes that clients really appreciate the changes Laserfiche has brought to the company—“They really like that when they phone us with an issue, we have all their documentation in front of us,” he says—which is due to the secure digital storage of their files. Their previous paper-based storage system left staff dealing with lost faxes and misplaced documents, which made it difficult to respond to client requests in a timely manner. Thanks to Laserfiche, lost faxes have dropped by over 50%. “Now, only three people in the entire company have the authority to delete documents, whereas with paper files, anyone could misplace or lose a document in a file,” he says.

Credential also implemented the Audit Trail™ module to further guarantee security. Audit Trail tracks user actions within the Laserfiche system, simplifying compliance with regulatory requirements. “With Audit Trail, I can easily show IDA regulators that employees are looking up client signatures while updating client information, and I can also show them that we have a highly secure process to manage our client documents,” Nichiporik says.

Because of the company’s initial success with Laserfiche, Credential is actively planning to expand the solution. “Eventually, we’d like to integrate Laserfiche with our trading system, so that our sales force can easily access client documents during the trading process,” Nichiporik says. “Not to mention that many departments within the firm have seen how well the system works, and now want imaging for themselves.

“Because of Laserfiche, we now expect immediate access to documents,” he continues. “Laserfiche solves problems for us every day. It’s easy to use, easy to implement and works well in many different environments. Laserfiche is really a superior solution.”

Shortly after deployment in early 2004, staff began scanning job files and the benefit was as obvious as it was immediate. “Retrieval. No question at all. My number one benefit is retrieval,” Howell says. “We had an employee at this end of the building, that whenever they needed an invoice, had to go to the other end, go into a banker’s box, then make a copy, then put everything back up. To find an invoice start to finish, took 20 minutes. Now, it takes five minutes, tops.”

In the process of deploying Laserfiche, Howell says, CCUA has developed “folders within folders” to sort and group the myriad financial documents and as-built drawings for each file, assigning a team of two people to scan and review, with a third staffer assigned spot-checking newly-created files for quality control. While the Engineering Department has been scanning job files since the beginning, both the Finance and Billing Departments now also employ scanning personnel. Says Howell, “Not only are they scanning customer payment information, but also ‘turn-on/turn-off’ requests, change of addresses – we scan all those requests. It just makes for better, more complete customer service having a record like that.”

These days 139 office and outside personnel access documents in Laserfiche, while 25-30 staff use it on a daily basis to either scan in CCUA documents or use Laserfiche for efficient retrieval of documents without leaving their workspaces. Ongoing backlog conversion efforts are continuing each day– thanks in no small part to a growing need for a disaster recovery plan in CCUA’s hurricane-prone part of the country, as well as Florida’s “Sunshine” Law, which mandates public access to records.

“Beginning in 2008, CCUA made it a priority to go back to [files from] 2005,” Howell says, adding that staff have made files from 2006-on their priority for this year. “We’re in Florida, so we’re looking at crisis management and disaster recovery if there’s a natural disaster. CCUA’s main concern is that we want current project files protected – that’s what keeps us operational,” he adds. “It’s not the files from 10-15 years ago, but the ones from the past two years that are very important.” Another benefit, Howell says, is that financial audits that used to mean hours and sometimes days of digging out records can now be done in an afternoon. “Instead of staff going to the filing cabinets to retrieve files, our auditors’ can go directly into Laserfiche to access and retrieve the required documents – they love it.”

Howell has long been a fan of using Laserfiche administrative tools to monitor productivity and manage long-term projects. Since implementing Audit Trail in 2006, Howell says he’s been able to maximize productivity. “I can make Excel spreadsheets and graphs from Laserfiche reports and see how we’re progressing on any of CCUA’s scanning projects.” This kind of oversight and responsiveness has made CCUA agile in a way not usually associated with a governmental entity. For instance, even in the midst of the recent economic slowdown, CCUA has not had to lay off any of its 139 staff members. Rather, using powerful reporting tools – Laserfiche among them – administrators have been able to minimize bottlenecks and re-assign staff where needed to ensure sustainable productivity evenly throughout the organization. As CCUA knows well, business is best when staff and information can flow as efficiently as the water service it provides.

These days, however, an officer responding to the same call can pull up reports right in their patrol car, accessing information vital to the safety of the EDP – and the public – using just a name, incident number or other simple keyword.

It’s this kind of progressive approach to information and process management that’s transformed the Hamilton Police Service from a command-and-control police model to a community-based-and-problem-solving service over the last decade. As HPS Records Supervisor Gary Holden puts it, “Laserfiche has allowed us to spend more time in the community and less time travelling back and forth to the station.”

But this progressive approach had to begin somewhere, and it started in 2000 when IT Manager Ross Memmlo began investigating document management to alleviate storage costs and repurpose valuable office space. Franz Gangl of Laserfiche reseller IKON Office Solutions demonstrated Laserfiche’s information management capabilities for Memmolo, IT Administrator Diana Scime, Shari Moore and Holden.

Holden says they chose Laserfiche based on four criteria:

• Business Functionality: “It needed to be really user-friendly, no matter how comfortable staff were with computers. Our reseller showed us an example of an agency about our size using a system similar in size and capacity to our proposal.”
• System Architecture: “The flexibility and expandability to allow for future development and integration was important.”
• Organization/Support Training: “We knew whenever we had a question, all we had to do was make that call to the 1-800 number.”
• Project Schedule: “According to our funding cycler, the system needed to be up and running by year’s end.”

Working with IKON, Memmlo planned a phased implementation that would begin with current reports, advance to backlog conversion, and finally establish Web access for officers and staff. Phase I began in fall 2002, scanning current incident reports and Motor Vehicle Collision (MVC) reports.

• Learn more about how enterprise content management drives a dynamic user experience at our new Webinar, “Collaborative Case Management for Government = ECM + BPM.” Reserve your seat here.

In early 2002, the implementation team developed “banner pages” to enable Quick Fields to index various reports, which helped with a massive backlog conversion project that would eventually add 860,000 images to the system. “We were able to scan anything and everything – photographs, willsays, handwritten notes – into folders,” says Holden. By 2004, the Laserfiche repository held over 300,000 active and historical incident reports, DNA records, MVC reports, pardon files and sudden death reports.

“One challenge we faced was reworking our existing paper processes,” explains Holden. “Many of our serious offences needed to be disseminated to many different officers and divisions. The new process had to ensure the report was coded according to Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, then scanned, entered on the Canadian Police Information Center (CPIC) system and reassigned for further investigation. The process changed how our Records Business Centre handled the reports.” To remedy the situation, Holden created a color-coded folder system staff use to process reports prior to scanning.

Quick Fields’ automated indexing also helped Holden to standardize the record keeping process, which, along with Laserfiche’s fuzzy search capabilities, has almost completely eradicated misfiling. “If a report is improperly indexed, we simply run a search to locate it within the database,” explains Holden.

This search capability has become especially empowering to police officers. “Optical Character Recognition (OCR) allows the front-line officer to glean valuable information from reports that wasn’t possible in the past,” Holden says.

“If an officer wants to know more about a rash of Breaking & Enterings where all he knows is a red pick-up that has a unique decal on the side door was involved, he can use Laserfiche search to look up other reports,” he adds. “We can’t possibly index every piece of information within a police report, but OCR and fuzzy search addresses that problem, making it a valuable investigative tool.”

It has become even more valuable since Hamilton deployed Laserfiche WebLink in 2004. Police Chief Brian Mullan, responding to a need for heightened police presence, realized he didn’t necessarily need to hire more officers if officers spent less time looking for paperwork. Holden explains. “With Internet access to the Laserfiche repository, officers can view police reports on their MDT [mobile data terminal],” he says. “It’s effectively made our cruisers an extension of our Records Management System (RMS). They can search five historical reports right away without linking.”

Adds Holden, “The ability to view active missing person photos or photographs of lost or stolen property is critical when locating a missing youth on the street or locating previously stolen property.”

For 2009-2010, the HPS Laserfiche team plans to expand Laserfiche to Hamilton’s Human Resources and Legal departments, but not before answering concerns about employee confidentiality and security rights.

For support, Holden looked to the Laserfiche Police User Groups he’s been attending for three years. “I knew York Police Service used Laserfiche in its HR department, so I thought, ‘Why re-invent the wheel?’ I asked them about their implementation and training process and what worked.” Based on what he learned, Holden formulated his own strategy, highlighting the ability to assign multi-layer security to employee records in transit, the ability for assigned HR staff to view documents from their desktop, as well as reducing paper files and better controlling retention.

The three patrol divisions in the City of Hamilton.

“We have three separate divisions. Laserfiche will allow yearly performance reviews to be shipped electronically between offices,” he explains. “It’s easy to understand Laserfiche as a simple storage repository, but you can move things around so you’re actually managing active records. The security capabilities of Laserfiche were a huge benefit for me to ensure confidentiality during this process, because I could assign rights that allowed a user to browse a report but not open it. They’d be directed to see the proper authority to obtain a copy of the report where necessary, which facilitated our disclosure processes.”

The ability to redact sensitive information was also key to the Records Business Center’s ability to process disclosures to the Courts and outside agencies. “The redaction ability of Laserfiche is by far, one the greatest assets to address these needs,” Holden says. “We used to copy our reports—twice—then black out the information and then copy the vetted version again. Redacting in Laserfiche saved us a fortune in paper and time. We also use stamping and sticky note annotations to address disclosure/non-disclosure issues and verification/validation processes of ongoing police investigations.”

It wasn’t until Holden could show that Laserfiche Audit Trail would ensure the integrity of legal documents that the Crown [District] Attorney signed on. “I had meetings with the Crown Attorney to ensure them there were no legal issues producing these documents as evidence in court,” Holden remembers. “We discussed the quality of the images and how we’d be using Audit Trail to confirm when a document was scanned or modified. We were ultimately able to scan in every document—except for witness statements, which they requested to remain in their original paper form.”

Ultimately, the Hamilton Police Service has realized a significant amount of savings by using Laserfiche to refine its business processes:

• $200,000 saved annually, due to downsizing 4 civilian staff in the Records Business Centre, as officers are able to access vital information directly.
• Officers spend more time in the community because they no longer need to attend Central Station to view reports.
• Clerks save time, because they no longer need to locate reports and read them to officers over the phone.
• Valuable floor space has been reclaimed from paper storage.
• Redacting documents in Laserfiche saves “a fortune in paper and time,” as Holden puts it, helping staff more easily meet file requests from the Courts and outside agencies.

• Spring 2002: The Project Team chooses Laserfiche.
• Fall 2002: Phase I begins. Staff start scanning in current incident reports and Motor Vehicle Collision (MVC) reports.
• 2003: Indexing is automated with Quick Fields. Backlog conversion of historical occurrence reports (860,000 images) takes 30 weeks.
• 2004: Phase I is successfully finished, with over 300,000 records and reports scanned into the system. Phase II begins. When it is finished, every officer and designated civilian will have direct access to Laserfiche through the Internet.
• 2009: Web access expands Laserfiche access to 120 additional users, including officers in their patrol cars.
• 2010: The Police Laserfiche Team plans to expand use to Human Resources and Legal Services departments.

The city had installed Laserfiche in its Finance Department in 1998 as a virtual file cabinet. “Between 1999-2003 we were only scanning a few thousand documents a month and it was limited to just the Finance department,” admits Network Administrator and Laserfiche Luminary Allen Pilgrim. By 2004, Laserfiche storage totaled just ten volumes of 4.6GB each. A significant number, but apparently not significant enough for one new city administrator.

“That same year, we got a new Finance Director. We’ll call her Brenda (not her real name),” Pilgrim explains. “We were having our second weekly meeting with her and she blurted out ‘We’re getting rid of Laserfiche.’ We were all shocked.”

Pilgrim took it upon himself to prove the system’s worth. He went into what he calls “stealth mode,” personally approaching other departments about stepping up their use of Laserfiche, tactfully earning their trust and answering their concerns along the way. Simply put, Laserfiche had its internal champion, but the software ultimately sold itself, user by user, process by process, department by department.

Albany, OR, Network Administrator Allen Pilgrim

“Most people were fearful of losing their precious paper. I sat down in meetings with people and just one on one made it clear that I was committed to ensuring the safety of their data,” Pilgrim explains. “As we progressed, people saw the evidence that I was serious.”

The Building division in Community Development was interested, for instance, but thought Laserfiche was limited to just the Finance Department. Pilgrim pointed out the annual maintenance had been moved to the IT budget, leaving Laserfiche open for intra-office adoption.

“What happened next was nothing short of amazing,” Pilgrim says. “The Building division latched onto Laserfiche as if it was the greatest thing they had ever seen.” Building’s Allison Liesse began scanning all day, every day, eventually working with Pilgrim to purchase a wide-format scanner. IT Staff even came up with interface integration with the city’s Accela PermPlus permitting software so that building inspectors could retrieve Laserfiche documents through the application. Within a year, storage jumped from 10 to 42 4.6GB volumes. Now, inspired both by Building’s success and Pilgrim’s handling of the implementation, Albany’s Planning division has come on board just this year.

Around the same time, Paul Jacobson in the Public Works Engineering division was interested in Laserfiche. Pilgrim was able to, as he puts it, “give him an area in Laserfiche to play with.” Jacobson’s experience inspired his whole department to convert to using Laserfiche. “There was no longer any talk of getting rid of Laserfiche because it had become too valuable to the City and more people were using it all the time.”

By 2006, Pilgrim convinced Albany’s IT Director to add Laserfiche as a standard install on every computer in the city. Pilgrim notes that by then, IT was independent from the Finance Department – and that “Brenda” had since moved on.

In 2008, the police department requested a demo. “They fell in love with the product,” Pilgrim says – and he was soon requesting two high-end scanners and training several PD employees. Concurrently, Pilgrim implemented Quick Fields. Police reports are now completely automated with Quick Fields. “They just drop them into the scanner and they’re done,” explains Pilgrim. Planning has since come on board; by now Public Works was now doing all of their projects in Laserfiche. Ambulance Billing has become, as Pilgrim puts it “another Quick Fields success story.” Operations also started doing more with Laserfiche.

Quick Fields, Quicker ROI

Pilgrim worked with Albany’s new (post-“Brenda”) Finance Director to approve the purchase and implementation of Quick Fields following a demo last year by reseller Michael Dane of VPCI. “We determined it would be perfect for four departments and the benefits have been spectacular,” Pilgrim says.

1. Allison Liesse in Building says it has saved her literally hundreds of hours of work – it saves her four hours a month processing timesheets alone.
2. Ambulance Billing reports are automatically processed by Quick Fields, which saves “dozens upon dozens” of hours.
3. For the Police Department, automatically processing thousands and thousands of police reports has been the biggest benefit of the city’s Quick Fields implementation. The failure rate is less than 1%. “Changing the slashes in the dates to dashes made all the difference,” Pilgrim notes. “Basically they just drop a stack of reports in the scanner and their job is done.”

The Future

Already in 2009, Pilgrim has done demos for staff of the Municipal Court, which has since started using the system, as well as to Albany’s Fire Department. The City Manager’s office and the HR Department are the latest additions, while the Parks & Recreation Department is slowly but surely adopting their own system. And all of Purchasing’s paperwork is stored in Laserfiche. “Most recently our GIS division had me set it up so they could move all of their As-Builts into Laserfiche,” adds Pilgrim.

Besides efficient (and satisfied) city employees in virtually every department, 2009 marks another Laserfiche milestone: the City of Albany will be only the third city in Oregon to launch “Digital Image as Original” (DIO). This will allow the city to maintain digital copies for many of our records,” explains Pilgrim. “This will allow us to lead the way on being more green, because it’s fun being green.” And as Albany has proved, Brendas of the world be darned, it’s fun being efficient, too.

Register for the “Laserfiche for Local Government = ECM + BPM” Webinar and learn more.

Avante’s individual user connections include Laserfiche document management, Workflow, Scanning, Snapshot and E-Mail, and an intuitive pricing structure makes it simple and affordable to add new features and functionality to your Laserfiche system. For a percentage of the price of your user licenses, you can add Web Access or Audit Trail, or for a fixed price, you can add Quick Fields, Plus or fully integrated, DoD 5015.2-certified records management. And when your system grows large enough, it’s simple to upgrade to Rio enterprise content management.

If you’ve been thinking about expanding the capabilities of your Laserfiche system, Avante may be the right fit for you. We’ll be taking orders for upgrades from Team and United systems as soon as Avante is released; for more information about upgrading, please contact your reseller.

To learn more about system components, or for answers to frequently asked questions, please visit the Avante Web site.

But in the last two years, Nicol and her staff have shined even more brightly in the Laserfiche Luminary Community by hosting guided tours of their offices so prospective cities can see Laserfiche in action. “We just enjoy sharing our success and trust it will help with their decision making or implementation,” she says.

It has. Nicol and her staff have hosted Bakersfield, South Pasadena, Thousand Oaks and Fontana—all California cities now using Laserfiche. Nicol was faced with an even more interesting opportunity recently when reseller Mike Dillon of National Technology Solutions told her that Boulder City, NV, was looking for new and better ways to utilize its existing Laserfiche program—especially its most recent addition, Agenda Manager.

“This was the first time we hosted a city that already had the product installed so the conversation there could be more in depth,” Nicol notes.

Pam Malmstrom, City Clerk of Boulder City, was well aware of Riverside’s success. “I met Colleen at the IIMC Region VIII Annual Conference in Tucson, Arizona this year and was impressed with her knowledge and enthusiasm about Laserfiche,” she says. On Dillon’s recommendation and Nicol’s invitation, Malmstrom and her staff paid Riverside a visit.

There, Riverside staff were able to provide in-depth instruction on the use of Agenda Manager and actually provided a manual of user/submitter/approver instructions for Boulder City to take home. Senior Deputy Clerk Cheryl Balz shared some tips for processing agendas, incorporating additional committee agenda preparations, and showed Malmstrom’s staff some tricks with Laserfiche metadata linking to make research easier (see sidebar). The Riverside Police Department showed BC’s PD representative more advanced uses of Audit Trail and other modules, and Roz Vinson offered copies of their structure for BC staff to take home to Nevada. “They were very receptive to our demonstration, had lots of questions for their reseller, and our staff and were excited about their future Laserfiche usage,” says Balz.

Boulder City was understandably grateful for the experience—and emboldened to expand its own use of Laserfiche. Says Malmstrom, “It was great to see how another city used Laserfiche and it reaffirmed our staff was on the right track in setting up our file and information formats in a similar fashion.”

The way Nicol sees it, she’s just paying forward the same service she and her staff were shown when they had their own questions years ago. “I recall how helpful it was to see the installation at Buena Park when we were first considering Laserfiche,” she recalls. “To see the solutions in action in an operating City Clerk’s Office brought the features to life and underscored the efficiencies, work flow improvements, and cost savings.” She’s confident her guest cities take away the same benefits. “At the conclusion of every tour, without exception, the visiting organization emphasizes the value from seeing the product in action and having our team of people who actually perform the work, as well as our technical staff, available to share ideas and solutions.”

Even now, as Nicol campaigns for the vice presidency of the IIMC in next year’s election, where she hopes to continue to inspire other municipalities towards greater efficiency and improved public service, she doesn’t hesitate to offer her office as an example when the opportunity arises. “Whether we’re referred by a reseller or I meet someone at a conference and the topic of Laserfiche comes up, I readily offer to demo the products,” she says. “We enjoy bragging about what a good tool Laserfiche is.”

When we introduced the first version of Laserfiche in the late 1980s, digital document management was a new concept for most organizations. Now, as technology has matured and the world has increasingly gone digital, few organizations can survive without it.

Organizations’ needs have also grown more complex over the years. In the past, they needed a system that would help their most paper-intensive departments archive and retrieve their documents. But now they need a solution that also helps them streamline business processes enterprise-wide.

The marketplace is clearly ready for an enterprise solution that’s easy on the budget and easy to purchase and install, and that’s why we’ve spent the last few years developing Rio.

One of Rio’s strongest features in this regard is its licensing structure—you simply purchase a named license for each user in your organization. This license provides users with a full range of ECM functionality, including Workflow, Web Access, Advanced Audit Trail, Snapshot and the E-mail Plug-in. License pricing follows a sliding scale, so the more users in your organization, the lower per-user price you’ll pay. In addition, you can upgrade your system to add Laserfiche WebLink to provide unlimited public access to documents in your Laserfiche repository.

Rio includes an unlimited number of Laserfiche servers, which you can use for back ups, failover clusters, testing and other purposes. Rio also helps you adapt to changing business conditions—you can add users simply by purchasing additional user licenses, and you can take advantage of workflow automation or Web-based document management without extra expense. This licensing structure makes budgeting for an enterprise deployment much easier, and it eliminates the long requisition process customers often face when they want to expand their system.

Rio also offers industry-leading integration with SharePoint, complementing SharePoint’s collaboration tools by adding imaging functionality and enhanced workflow capabilities. So if your organization has a SharePoint installation, but you’re not sure how it will work with your Laserfiche system, now there’s a solution to help you unite SharePoint with Laserfiche, without compromising the security or records management functionality of your Laserfiche solution.

We’ve created a Website to provide you with more information about Rio. If you have questions about if Rio is right for your organization, please contact your solutions provider.

“The ECM industry has been deluged with complex and difficult-to-implement systems that have been cobbled together from many different products,” said Laserfiche CEO Nien-Ling Wacker. “The time is right for an innovative solution that is easy to purchase, deploy and administer. Rio transcends product boundaries to unite document management, business process management and transparent records management in a single enterprise solution.”

With Rio, organizations simply purchase named user licenses which provide a full range of ECM functionality, including workflow automation, Web-based document management, audit trail tracking, optional DoD 5015.2-certified records management and powerful capture tools that unify content located in disparate systems and formats. Licenses range from $700 to $100 per user, based on the quantity purchased.

Rio also includes an unlimited number of Laserfiche servers and repositories, which organizations can use to support back ups, failover clusters, testing environments and multiple locations. To expand their systems, organizations simply purchase additional licenses, which eliminates long requisition processes and makes budgeting for an enterprise deployment much easier.

“We chose Rio because it really made sense,” said Frank Hagy, CIO of the Florida League of Cities. “Because we have locations in different parts of the state, Rio will help us streamline administration, add additional functionality and reduce our annual support costs. It’s a refreshing way to think about ECM.”

Rio is built on a Microsoft platform and uses Microsoft-standard tools, including Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and the .NET framework, to simplify system administration. Laserfiche Workflow, built on the Windows Workflow Foundation, helps organizations move beyond simple document routing to automate everyday tasks, optimize business processes and share information with a wide variety of applications. And a seamless integration with SharePoint^® enables users to work with both paper and electronic documents from a uniform, user-friendly interface.

“We design our products to make complex systems simpler,” said Wacker. “Rio provides what enterprises have been looking for—an intuitive, easy-to-use ECM system that builds on their existing Microsoft infrastructure.”

About Laserfiche

Laserfiche (www.laserfiche.com) creates simple and elegant document management solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, Laserfiche has helped more than 25,000 organizations—including state and local governments, financial services firms and healthcare organizations—streamline processes for managing documents, records and workflow.

I am very excited about Audit Trail. It will not only allow us to track who is doing what in Laserfiche, but also to add the watermarks to the printed and e-mailed documents that we have been needing desperately. As a District Attorney’s office, having the correct information on the document (like when it was printed) can be very helpful when you’re going to produce documents for discovery.

I now have a new goal. That is to learn SQL 2005 Reports so I can actually write reports for the Audit Trail…Always something new to learn.

Suzanne Brean

Linn County District Attorney’s Office

Linn County, Oregon

But success has its price, and for BDI, it came in the form of proliferating paperwork. As an MGA, BDI provides a broad range of insurance products to independent insurance agents. A staff of underwriters supports these agents by quoting and binding both commercial and personal insurance coverage, from simple property policies to highly sophisticated excess and umbrella coverage.

“We had over 7,000 insurance policies that our underwriters constantly needed to access, which meant multiple trips to our file room,” remembers IT/MIS Manager Tate Tooley. “We were constantly dealing with misplaced files, which cut into our ability to provide quality customer service.”

BDI realized that a digital document management system would not only eliminate these lost files, but would also improve customer service by enabling staff to immediately respond to agents’ questions. “We wanted staff to have all documentation at their fingertips,” Tooley says. “We wanted to store auto, property and excess liability documentation in the same place, so underwriters wouldn’t have to request information from another department.”

“Many of our clients had already switched to digital documents and paperless offices, so we were a little out of date with our paper filing system,” Tooley continues. “The key was to fit the new system to our current workflow, with minimum lag time during the integration process.”

After evaluating several systems, BDI chose Laserfiche®. “When we evaluated and ultimately chose Laserfiche, there were two main things about the product that really stood out,” Tooley says. “First, we liked having a local reseller that would assist us with implementation and ongoing support. Second, when our reseller, nCompass Networks, showed us Laserfiche, it was clear that we could take our existing paper workflow and mold Laserfiche around it. The competition gave us the feeling of ‘here is our system and how it works—adjust your workflow to make it fit with ours,’ and that isn’t what we wanted.”

Tooley also appreciated the Laserfiche system’s flexibility. “The Laserfiche software is very user-friendly and intuitive, unlike the other systems we reviewed,” he says. “And from the hardware side, Laserfiche doesn’t require multiple servers to run efficiently. We found Laserfiche runs very nicely on a mid-level server that also handles other processes in our office.”

BDI began their implementation by scanning 350,000 documents into the system, and, using the Quick Fields™ module, dramatically reduced the labor costs that would have been associated with such an ambitious project. Quick Fields automatically created the repository’s folder structure, filed the documents in the appropriate folders and then sent policies to the appropriate underwriters. Without Quick Fields, staff would have had to manually locate each folder after scanning it into Laserfiche. This automation saved 20 minutes per policy, resulting in over $23,000 in saved labor costs.

Since implementing Laserfiche, the firm has cut the amount of time necessary to issue a new policy from 10 days to three. Staff continue using Quick Fields to automate the scanning and sorting of monthly agent statements. Using Zone OCR technology, Quick Fields reads the account number and agent name on the statement and automatically fills in the matching template fields, and then files the statement in the appropriate agent’s folder. Audit Trail™ helps Tooley monitor actions occurring in the Laserfiche repository, tracking where a file was moved to, or if it was placed in the wrong location or improperly named, which he says tremendously minimizes the burden on IT staff.

Because there is only a single staff member supporting the company’s IT infrastructure, Tooley stresses that Laserfiche’s minimal IT support requirements are key. “From an IT perspective, the flexibility of the system’s security is excellent,” he says. “And it’s very easy to administer.”

Currently, BDI stores nearly a million documents in their Laserfiche repository—a total of almost 3.9 million images, ranging from scanned paper documents and electronic documents to photographs and e-mails. The repository has three main folder trees: one for policies, one for quotes and one for daily mail. Tooley uses access rights to give every user their own personal folder, where new policies are dropped for underwriters to review. Managers and supervisors can access each of their employees’ in-boxes to see their workload, which Tooley says makes it much easier to track workflow and the quantity of work completed. “But it’s not just important for supervision,” he says. “If an employee has any question about a file, both the supervisor and the employee can review the file simultaneously, even if they’re in different locations.”

As an MGA, BDI works with both the independent insurance agents who purchase policies for their clients and the insurance companies that provide the policies. By eliminating paper-based processes, Laserfiche helps staff provide both groups with more comprehensive customer service. “Handling documents electronically is much more efficient than handling physical paper,” Tooley says, “and having information right at our fingertips allows us to process quotes and policies much quicker than before.”

In the future, BDI plans to expand Laserfiche to the accounting department, as well as to implement WebLink™ to provide agents with access to documents—such as their monthly statements—through BDI’s Web portal. They’d also like to add the Workflow™ module to further automate their existing procedures. “Many people argue that the largest benefit of document management lies in the efficiency gains provided by workflow technology, and I wouldn’t disagree with that at all,” Tooley says. “Laserfiche has already made our office so much more efficient that I can’t begin to imagine what adding Workflow will do.”

Tooley appreciates the flexibility of Laserfiche’s modular design, which enables him to add functionality when needed—but he also stresses how well the system works, without requiring any additional modification. “At this point, we haven’t integrated any other applications with Laserfiche, and, believe it or not, we haven’t customized it at all,” he says. “We haven’t needed to, because Laserfiche works perfectly straight out of the box.”

“I have recommended Laserfiche to several organizations,” he continues. “When we decided to focus on technology, streamlining our work processes was the logical first step forward. As an IT director, I was relieved to have an easy to use and easy to administer system that improved our work processes without confusing our staff. And that’s something that works for any organization, regardless of industry.”

The SurgiCenter performed its first procedure on May 22, 1989, and hasn’t stopped since. “We have 100 doctors and 35 staff members working together to provide superior patient care, with over 20 procedures performed on an average day,” says Jeffery Johnson, systems information specialist. “That creates a lot of information to manage.”

Relying on paper patient charts, however, was limiting staff’s ability to efficiently share that information. “Too many people needed records simultaneously, including clinical staff, the billing department, auditors and the medical records technician, who needed to file reports that came in days later,” Johnson says. “Staff didn’t take the process seriously, and there were constant filing errors.

“Around 30 charts per month were checked out just for auditing by anesthesia and nursing staff,” he continues. “If the charts were unavailable or incomplete, the billing department couldn’t do their work. And to make matters worse, we were more successful than expected—over a five year period, our case load grew from 5,300 to 8,600.”

Too much success is a nice problem to have, but the SurgiCenter faced its biggest challenge in managing paper patient records. The cost of storing records was rapidly increasing, and keeping up with records retention requirements was a burden. “Offsite storage was 5 miles away, so we were paying to store the records and wasting man-hours to retrieve them,” Johnson remembers. “Even before HIPAA passed, we knew we couldn’t maintain records integrity and patient confidentiality with paper records. We knew something had to be done.”

Staff initially considered implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) system, but rejected the idea because commercial systems didn’t meet the SurgiCenter’s needs. “As a surgery center, we typically only see a patient two or three times, so we didn’t need the functionality of a traditional EMR—not to mention the expense,” Johnson says. “We knew we needed to move to electronic record keeping, however, so digital document management seemed to be an ideal solution. We could eliminate paper, secure our records and easily locate information, which was just what we needed.”

When Johnson took over the medical records department in 1996, he agreed to manage HIPAA compliance only if he could deploy a digital document management system. “We experimented with another product that didn’t scan efficiently, wasn’t user-friendly and had poor retrieval capability,” he explains. “The clincher came when the manufacturer phased out the application, and they wanted us to purchase their replacement product. That’s when I began researching other document management applications and found Laserfiche®.

“We selected Laserfiche because we needed a solution employees would learn quickly,” Johnson continues. “We liked the quality of the scanned images, and the processing speed was superior. We also liked that we could run audit reports for accountability. Laserfiche had everything we needed.”

Implementation went quickly, with the repository going live after only one month of testing. “We initially scanned in three years’ worth of records,” Johnson says. “In phase two, we scanned another four years’ worth of records—about 31,000 medical records in all.”

Currently, the SurgiCenter uses Laserfiche to streamline workflow throughout the life cycle of patient records. When a patient pre-registers, staff create a paper chart that includes a bar-coded face sheet. After the patient’s procedure, they scan the chart into Laserfiche, using Quick Fields™ and Bar-Code Recognition™ to automatically create the digital patient record and populate each document’s template fields, simplifying indexing and chart retrieval.

The SurgiCenter’s billing department also uses Laserfiche to manage explanation of benefits (EOB) forms. Quick Fields automatically fills in the payor and date for each EOB in the associated template, which aids in tracking and retrieval. “Laserfiche has brought greater efficiencies in all departments, but especially in Billing,” Johnson says. “We’ve seen much faster claims processing and collections.”

Perhaps most importantly, Laserfiche helps the Center remain compliant with HIPAA regulations. “With Laserfiche, we can log in requests for records, track due dates and redact sensitive information, fulfilling release of information requirements. We also use the Audit Trail™ module to safeguard patient privacy,” Johnson explains. “Our administrator serves on a national HIPAA compliance panel, and she frequently invites confused hospital administrators to see how Laserfiche helps us meet these challenges.”

The Center also must remain compliant with Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAHC) regulations. The AAHC conducts on-site evaluations every three years, and audited the SurgiCenter just a few months ago. “We passed with flying colors,” Johnson reports. “In a typical audit, they request random charts, but on this last audit, they got very specific, requesting two charts of patients who were also Wards of the State. This isn’t information we track, so it would normally be very difficult to find.

“Thanks to Laserfiche’s full-text search capabilities, we located these charts very quickly,” he continues. “The auditors also requested charts of cancer patients, which we found just as quickly. Needless to say, they were duly impressed.”

Laserfiche also helps the SurgiCenter easily complete state-mandated quarterly pathology reports of cancer quantities, broken out by type. “As you can imagine, this data was quite difficult to flag and track with paper, but with Laserfiche, the staff person simply searches on the specific cancer—like melanoma or carcinoma—for the relevant time period, and the results are right there almost instantly,” Johnson says.

The best thing about Laserfiche, according to Johnson, is that the Center can manage patient records with fewer staff members. “Before Laserfiche, we had separate departments for surgical scheduling, patient registration and medical records. We’ve merged the three departments and eliminated the medical records clerk position,” he says. “We originally had three scanning clerks, and when one left, not only did we not have to replace her, but the remaining two were able to take on scheduling and records management duties. We’re now down to a single full-time scanner.”

But Laserfiche has delivered more than easier compliance, faster reporting and staffing efficiencies. “We’ve had a lot of benefits that we didn’t expect,” Johnson says. “We used to have constant friction among departments who needed the same records or who were looking for missing records, but with Laserfiche, everyone who needs a chart can always find it. It’s dramatically improved the working relationship between departments.”

Johnson doesn’t hesitate in recommending Laserfiche to other ambulatory surgery centers. “In practical terms, we’ve reduced costs, improved collections and established peace of mind when it comes to record keeping,” Johnson says. “You can’t go wrong with Laserfiche.”

Corporation Counsel Lincoln Ashida recalls that the situation was “slightly embarrassing” when he assumed office several years ago. A 100-foot-long hallway was lined with bankers’ boxes full of files, and additional boxes were housed in other county buildings—including the basement of an old hospital. Locating a legal opinion, letter or other document often involved asking a senior employee if they could remember where the item had been stored.

“We were practicing law in a vacuum,” Ashida says. “The closest thing we had to an ‘information repository’ was the collective memories of the employees who had served the most years in our office.” Ashida particularly remembers the negative impact such inefficiency had on both service delivery and the office’s credibility. “Sometimes, our clients had to produce copies of legal records for us because our staff either could not locate them or, worse, said that no such records existed.”

Sensing the urgency of the situation, Ashida and his staff began researching digital document management. After reviewing several systems, they selected Laserfiche®, primarily because of its ease of use and powerful search tools.

Once the installation was complete, staff began to scan legal opinions and other documents into the Laserfiche repository. As part of the scanning process, optical character recognition (OCR) technology indexes every word in every document. Thanks to this technology, staff can now easily perform keyword searches across the hundreds of thousands of documents that reside in the repository—something that was impossible when the office relied on a paper-based system.

Martha Rodillas, secretary to the corporation counsel, explains that keyword searches are particularly valuable when attorneys need to determine whether the office has addressed a particular issue in the past. “Prior to issuing a new opinion, our attorneys need to know whether our office has opined on this issue before and, if so, whether the opinion needs to be updated,” she says. “If there is nothing on point, there may be opinions on similar issues that can aid the attorneys in drafting their opinion. Finding these documents is critical for attorneys to do their jobs effectively.”

From left to right: Katherine Garson, Lincoln Ashida and Martha Rodillas.

In addition to its comprehensive search capabilities, Laserfiche includes a number of other features that help the office’s staff to do their jobs more effectively. For example, customized template fields enable staff to record key document metadata, such as the date on which a document was approved for release and the name of the person who approved it. Electronic redaction tools enable staff to obscure sensitive information prior to releasing a document, while the ability to e-mail documents to clients from within the Laserfiche repository saves staff time and reduces photocopying costs. Publishing documents to CD has proved particularly valuable in speeding up the discovery process, because the office can provide opposing counsel with trial exhibits on a single disc, rather than having to ship multiple boxes of paper files.

Deputy Corporation Counsel Katherine Garson believes that one case in particular illustrates the ways Laserfiche has helped the office better serve its constituents. The case, which had been pending for more than two years, was scheduled to go to trial in August 2007. In mid-May, one of the attorneys assigned to the case decided to retire, while the other left to head another county department. This meant that the office had to get two new attorneys up to speed on the case and ready for trial—in less than 90 days.

Depositions were scheduled for June and July, and there was no way the attorneys would be able to read through the seventeen boxes of documents associated with the case prior to deposing the witnesses. Without missing a beat, staff immediately set to work scanning these documents into the Laserfiche repository so that the attorneys could quickly search through them to locate vital information. As part of the scanning process, staff also applied a special template to the most important documents, in which they recorded the document’s date. This metadata later proved critical when the attorneys needed to reconstruct the timeline in which certain events in the case occurred.

Garson recalls that during the depositions, the county’s attorneys were just as prepared as the other side’s, even though they’d only been working on the case for a matter of weeks. Thanks to Laserfiche, the county’s attorneys could also quickly call up exhibits on their computer screens, rather than having to rummage through boxes or file folders. “Perhaps the most memorable part of these depositions,” she says, “was intimidating the other attorneys with our organization.”

The week before the trial was set to begin, the county received a settlement offer from the other side. “It was a great deal for the county, and we’re glad we were able to settle the case without going to trial,” Garson says. “But it’s important to note that, thanks to Laserfiche, our attorneys were ready for the trial, despite the fact that they’d just been assigned to the case.”

The office is currently in the process of installing Web Access™ so that attorneys can access the Laserfiche repository while they’re in court or attending meetings away from the office. Ashida and his staff also have plans to implement the Audit Trail™ module to track user activity and the Quick Fields™ Bates Numbering utility to automatically assign an identifier to each scanned document. And Rodillas definitely plans to attend the 2008 Laserfiche Institute Conference to build on everything she learned last year.

Whatever the future holds, Ashida is confident that Laserfiche will continue to help his office provide exemplary service. “Our office vision statement is, ‘We are the answer.’ Laserfiche has furthered this vision by helping us readily answer our clients’ questions, whether by producing an organized history of all the documents associated with a certain case or controversy, locating legal opinions concerning any subject matter, or organizing the large numbers of documents in our litigation files,” he says. “Ultimately, no software, program or other tool has been as valuable to our office as Laserfiche.”

“The Office of the Corporation Counsel shows how digital document management can streamline every aspect of the municipal attorney’s workflow, from conducting research to exchanging information with opposing counsel to preparing exhibits for trial.”

Nien-Ling Wacker
Laserfiche CEO
(Shown with Martha Rodillas)

Laserfiche President and CEO Nien-Ling Wacker discussed the office during her recent keynote address at Hawaii’s Fifth Annual Statewide Municipal Attorney’s Training Conference. “The Office of the Corporation Counsel shows how digital document management can streamline every aspect of the municipal attorney’s workflow, from conducting research to exchanging information with opposing counsel to preparing exhibits for trial,” she says. “I congratulate the office on the efficiency gains and cost savings they’ve realized, and I invite other municipal attorneys to look to the County of Hawaii to see how digital document management fits the rhythm of the way attorneys work.”

Rodillas agrees with this assessment: “We would definitely recommend Laserfiche to other municipal attorneys and government offices, and we invite other municipal attorneys who are considering Laserfiche or who are just getting started with Laserfiche to contact us.” In fact, the office has been so successful that the county plans to install Laserfiche in seven additional departments in 2008. These departments, like the Office of the Corporation Counsel, will receive technical support from ECS Imaging, a Laserfiche reseller based in Riverside, CA.

Rodillas thinks back to the days before Laserfiche, when finding a critical document involved searching through the hundreds of bankers’ boxes lining the hallway. “Laserfiche has certainly taken us to a higher level,” she says.

We’re pleased to announce that Laserfiche 8 has received DoD 5015.2 certification. Because it involves such rigorous testing, 5015.2 certification serves as the de facto standard for records management applications, according to Laserfiche Software Release Manager Justin Pava.

The certification process included four days of testing by a staff member from the DoD’s Joint Interoperability Test Command. Pava explains that the testing process involved tasks that are not only part of records management but of document management in general, such as importing documents, working with metadata, and using the Audit Trail™ module. The tester also worked with some of the new functionality in Laserfiche 8, such as the new template field types.

“The testing process went very smoothly—the tester did not have any trouble figuring out how to use Laserfiche, and she asked very few questions,” Pava says. “In fact, she mentioned that this was one of the smoothest certifications she’s done—and she’s been performing these certification tests for more than ten years.

“The fact that Laserfiche meets the DoD’s standards for records storage, retention and destruction shows that Laserfiche offers a well-designed system that will help records managers in all industries do their jobs more effectively,” he continues. “Just as important, the certification marks an important milestone in the development of Laserfiche 8, because it shows that Laserfiche 8 is as intuitive and easy-to-use as earlier versions of the software, and can also stand up to rigorous testing.”

If you’d like to learn more about Laserfiche records management functionality, please visit the Records Management Section of our Website.

Laserfiche offers three levels of auditing capabilities:

• Starter Audit Trail is geared toward basic regulatory compliance for tracking the modification of data stored in the repository.

• Standard Audit Trail builds on the Starter edition, logging more events, providing more flexibility in determining how events are logged, and registering unsuccessful attempts to perform an action.

• Advanced Audit Trail builds on the Standard edition to include monitoring all security changes and searches performed. The advanced edition also allows tracking the reasons users perform certain actions and supports watermarking every page a user prints.

Laserfiche has helped Fairfield eliminate the file cabinets and store these critical documents more securely. In fact, Turner says that Laserfiche’s granular security options played a major role in earning department heads’ trust for the new system—and have had an overwhelmingly positive impact across the organization.

For example, Fairfield sometimes retains an overriding royalty interest (ORRI) in an oil-drilling venture that’s based on the data Fairfield provides. “An ORRI provides us with a percentage payment on all revenue that’s produced using our data,” Turner explains. “Sounds simple. But oil exploration is a complex business. It may be a couple of years before a well is drilled. Partnerships and joint ventures may be formed and dissolved along the way.”

Royalty payments are overseen by Fairfield’s landman. In order to do her job, she needs access to documents owned by numerous departments. For example, she needs to review the marketing department’s correspondence folder in order to track ownership changes and to check a well’s production status. She also needs to review the accounting department’s accounts receivable data to ensure that Fairfield is getting paid in accordance with the contracts. However, “like everyone else, our department heads don’t like sharing information outside their department unless they can be sure the information isn’t misused,” Turner says.

Laserfiche provided an ideal solution to this problem. “With Laserfiche, we can provide the landman with instant access to the documents she needs—yet still protect confidential information in compliance with HIPAA and other regulations. Also, the Audit Trail™ feature helps us track document access, so we can easily see when we need to make adjustments to security.

“We’ve always done a lot of data sales, and we knew that our data was good. But our income from ORRIs never seemed to be as high as it should have been,” Turner continues. “Thanks to Laserfiche and the new processes we’ve implemented, our ORRI income has increased tenfold in the last few years.”

Like the landman, the Fairfield customs agent uses Laserfiche to cross departmental lines and retrieve the information she needs to keep operations running smoothly. “When our ships and crews return to port, the Department of Homeland Security requires extensive documentation about the ship and everyone on it,” Turner says. “Using Laserfiche, our agent has 24/7 access to everything she needs, from the ships’ certification information to personnel information to the US Customs Bonds. Without Laserfiche, it’d be nearly impossible for her to do her job.

“Every day, there are a number of situations where we need to refer to our documentation in order to keep our business running,” Turner concludes. “We couldn’t keep up with those demands if we were still relying on file cabinets.”

“We added Audit Trail to our Laserfiche system,” reports the hospital’s plant operations manager, Dwaine Boothe. “We’d planned to add this module to ensure HIPAA compliance when we chose Laserfiche.

“We bought it in as soon as our repository of scanned medical records was large enough to start sharing files with other departments and medical professionals. With Audit Trail in place, we are confident that our records will be in compliance with HIPAA moving forward.”

At this point, Franklin Medical Center has scanned more than 250,000 pages of medical records into the Laserfiche repository, including all active files going back a year. Emergency room doctors now have the ability to refer to Laserfiche to review the medical records of incoming patients.

Boothe expects the hospital to soon have all its archives in Laserfiche as part of an intensive scanning program put together by his assistant, Judy Ogden. That program will enable them to remove the five portable storage buildings that currently house paper records and that were their chief reason for turning to Laserfiche in the first place.

Records Manager Roz Vinson and Captain Mike Blakely reveal how the Riverside, CA, Police Department took bold first steps and now makes great strides in quality of service to officers and the community.

More than 100,000 pages accumulate in the Records Bureau each year due to high volume and long retention. Every day, nearly 300 new reports are filed. Homicide records are never destroyed, and other felony records have a 10-year retention. The state’s three-strikes law mandates permanent retention for related records. The Records Bureau also must navigate the web of rules and regulations that governs the release of police records: the Freedom of Information Act, the California Public Records Act, court orders. Bureau staff must verify each requestor’s right to know before releasing sensitive documents.

That’s the records management side. On the street, officers and detectives need complete information to work safely and effectively. But according to Captain Blakely, in the past, “We simply couldn’t afford to have officers off the streets long enough to pull together all of the details they might need.”

The challenge facing Riverside PD was how to put more intelligence into officers’ hands without pulling them off the street to wait in line for records. All without compromising security or complicating the already difficult job of the Records Bureau.

“The push for conversion from paper-based files to electronic document management started in the mid-1990s with senior police officials who were very pro-technology,” Vinson says.

Captain Blakely adds, “We have a fiduciary responsibility to get value from tax dollars. We felt that we had an obligation to enable the officers we had to be more efficient and chose to focus our attention on automation.”

A successful proposal to the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services’ Making Officer Redeployment Effective (COPS MORE) program won the funding. Riverside proposed that a document management solution would free officers to spend more time on the streets and less time waiting for records.

The Laserfiche project got underway in 2000. Records Bureau staffers were the first authorized users. Only when Vinson had confirmed the effectiveness of the system to her rigorous standards did she consider providing wider access. “You just can’t afford to have computer programs down if you are a detective working a case,” she says. In 2001, the department extended access to detectives and sergeants. “We’ve slowly increased the number of users, making sure we did sufficient training to prevent the introduction of errors,” she says. “We now have 250 users.”

Detectives, sergeants and police management have access to reports in Laserfiche. The Legal Department has read-only access. This alone is a major gain in efficiency over pre-document management days, when bureau staff lost countless hours making copies for the Legal Department, the District Attorney and other law enforcement agencies.

And what improves productivity in the Records Bureau helps protect officers in the field. “Thanks to our document management project,” says Captain Blakely, “the reports are available, and they do read them. Knowing the full details, including descriptions of suspects, means that they are going to be more prepared and, therefore, safer.”

The Records Bureau is also exploring application integration to further advance its records automation strategy. Its CAD system is already integrated with Laserfiche to automatically create case folders in the document management repository.

The integrated solution creates an archival TIFF image of the CAD history, autopopulates index information from the CAD system and places it in the Laserfiche folder. That folder then becomes the primary holder of case information, including supplemental reports, toxicology reports, photo sheets, CLETS teletypes and more.

Looking ahead, Riverside PD plans to build on today’s successes. Ms.Vinson’s vision is to have all reports, digital audio and video recordings, digital photos and supplemental information accessible in one Laserfiche case file.

Until then, she concludes, the current improvements mean that “police officers and detectives are on the streets more than before, with more information at their fingertips.”