“Many providers adopted EHRs thinking that these systems would make their practices paper-free,” said Laserfiche Vice President Tom Wayman. “In reality, there’s still a lot of unstructured content that needs to be managed in a HIPAA-compliant fashion, including consent forms, EKGs, EOBs, physician licenses and more. ECM is the key to completing your transition to a secure, efficient and paper-free practice.”

Laserfiche solves business problems across the practice, facilitating everything from patient records management to HR onboarding and disaster recovery planning. “Laserfiche is committed to providing stress-free ECM solutions that are easy to implement, easy to administer and easy to use,” said Wayman. “As such, we’re offering free massages for MGMA attendees to reflect our commitment to making life easier for practice managers and physicians alike.”

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #1245 throughout the event to demonstrate its software solutions, provide free massages and distribute copies of customer success stories featuring Fertility Centers of Illinois, Dallas Associated Dermatologists and Arkansas’ CareLink.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. Since 1987, medical groups have used Laserfiche to manage both patient and practice files in a HIPAA-compliant environment, easily increasing information access, speeding billing processes and saving time and money.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

Laserfiche’s natural approach to EMR allows medical groups to automate medical records capture and processing in a way that’s not overwhelming, complicated or cumbersome for doctors and staff. In addition, the flexibility of the software extends its usefulness to many other areas of the practice, including Accounting, Admissions, Billing, Credentialing, Human Resources, Legal and more.

According to Bill Duke, executive director at Dallas Associated Dermatologists, “EMR systems are focused exclusively on patient records, but Laserfiche gives us the infrastructure to streamline operations across the practice.”

To learn more about how Laserfiche can help your practice intuitively and easily manage both patient and back-office information, stop by booth #628 for a demonstration of the software, your free copy of “A Guide to Hybrid EMR” and the new Dallas Associated Dermatologists case study.

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including medical groups, hospitals and managed care organizations—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system allows healthcare organizations to securely manage patient records, accelerate payment cycles and decrease costs. It enables organizations to more easily comply with HIPAA privacy rules and Joint Commission patient safety goals—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“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.”

Such was certainly the case for Dr. Brian Hanson’s gastroenterology (GI) practice in Ukiah, CA. One of just two GI doctors within a 90-mile radius in rural northern California, Hanson at times may see more than 200 patients a month. He’s a member of several boards and committees, and his practice is affiliated with three different hospitals, two ambulatory surgery centers and two rural healthcare clinics which serve patients in both Mendocino and Lake Counties.

On any given day, Hanson might be found performing outpatient endoscopic procedures, providing acute inpatient gastroenterology services, or seeing patients for consultations at one of the outlying rural health clinics or in his private office. His practice offers patient education programs, educational material, hospital consultations, 24-hour coverage in case of emergency, multiple offices located near local hospitals, and billing.

Stacie Sturges, Hanson’s practice manager, has worked for the gastroenterologist since before he started his own office in 2004. “Dr. Hanson does everything in his power to put his patients first,” Sturges explains, “but staying on top of such a huge volume of paperwork made everything more complicated. Having accurate, up-to-date information at our fingertips is essential, and paper-based records just weren’t getting the job done.

“Before Laserfiche, a simple phone call from a patient triggered a lot of extra work for the office staff,” she adds. “Hunting around for the patient’s paper chart, paging through it to find the relevant information, noting the phone call in the record and then presenting everything to the doctor. It took a lot of time.”

The practice had considered implementing a traditional electronic medical records (EMR) system, but, as Sturges says, “EMR is so complicated. Everyone knows that.”

Indeed, traditional EMR has a number of serious drawbacks, including:

• Prohibitive costs.
• Overly involved requirements for customization.
• Complicated changes to the existing clinical workflow.

The Natural Approach to EMR

Wary of disrupting patient care in service of complex EMR technology, Sturges discovered a more natural solution to the practice’s information management challenges one day while reading Healthcare IT News: “I saw an ad for ‘document management’ and I knew that this was what we desperately needed.”

Best-in-class content management software—with its ability to digitize, organize and store content from across the entire practice—is being adopted by many small medical offices that want an affordable and easy-to-use alternative to traditional EMR. These “hybrid” solutions (so named because they combine content management with other applications such as practice management and e-prescribe) provide a simple, centralized and secure means of managing patient records without complicating the clinical workflow.

“Most doctors’ offices like ours do not have an IT expert in their back pocket,” explains Sturges. “The fact that Laserfiche is so user friendly made it very appealing to us.”

In December 2008, Hanson’s practice purchased and installed the Laserfiche Avante suite from Laserfiche reseller AMI – The Paperless Company. In less than one week, AMI had installed the software and hardware and trained Hanson’s staff. According to Sturges, Hanson’s practice is using Laserfiche to “make our own EMR.”

In terms of the installation process, “The guys at AMI were awesome,” says Sturges. “They listened to what we had to say and organized our solution in a fashion that matched the way we wanted to work. Most importantly, our transition to a paperless office was effortless! The install was completely smooth.”

Today, with Laserfiche and three Fujitsu FI 6140 scanners in place, the office is running like a well-oiled machine. Hanson carries his Fujitsu Tablet PC wherever he goes so that he has real-time access to patient information. This enables him to immediately respond to issues that need attention instead of waiting to get back to the office and dealing with a pile of paper charts.

Technology that Adapts to the Practice

The more closely a software solution mirrors the day-to-day realities of a practice’s working methods, the more likely it is to deliver value. Sturges appreciates the flexibility of the Laserfiche solution, stating, “This isn’t one of those cookie cutter systems that you have to conform to. Most doctors like making their own decisions, and they don’t like being told what to do. Laserfiche allows them to decide how they want to work.”

Hanson’s practice has configured Laserfiche to handle a number of patient-related tasks, including:

• Storing scanned records. The folder structure in the Laserfiche repository is organized by patient. Each patient has a folder that contains subfolders for test results, surgical procedures, X-ray information and so forth. This keeps the information organized and easily accessible by authorized employees.
• Automatically routing information. Using Laserfiche Workflow, test results and other important patient updates are automatically sent to Dr. Hanson as soon as they are entered into the system. This speeds Hanson’s response to patients and saves staff time.
• Rapidly processing records. Hanson’s office has customized the document templates in Laserfiche Quick Fields by adding a status field that enables staff to quickly and easily identify urgent messages, call backs and real-time progress notes. In addition, automatic information capture and indexing cuts down on manual data entry and gets information into the system swiftly.
• Facilitating compliance. Laserfiche Audit Trail ensures information security and simplifies regulatory compliance. Hanson’s practice uses it to stay HIPAA-compliant by following the flow of information, keeping track of changes and noting what needs to be done next.

To Sturges, this is a clear-cut case of technology adapting to the flow of the practice, rather than the other way around. “We don’t need all the bells and whistles associated with traditional EMR,” she says. “Laserfiche has been a ‘meaningful use’ solution for us because it gives us exactly what we need to manage our office and improve patient care.”

Passing the Benefits Along to Patients

For Hanson’s practice, Laserfiche has decreased the costs associated with storing and handling paper records, ensured the safety and accessibility of those records, and increased the efficiency of the practice’s day-to-day operations and employees. Some of the chief benefits of the system include:

• Comprehensive search functionality allows staff to locate records within seconds.
• Remote access to the Laserfiche repository over a secure private network (VPN) gives Dr. Hanson the ability to instantly locate and amend records without pulling other staff members away from their jobs—even when he’s not in the office.
• Multiple people can access the same digital record at the same time.
• No electronic records ever get lost.

All of these benefits, however, would be meaningless if they didn’t ultimately enhance the quality of patient care.

“Providing top-quality care is of the utmost importance to Dr. Hanson,” says Sturges. “We’re always asking ourselves, ‘How can we better serve this patient?’ Many of them are facing really difficult decisions regarding their healthcare. They deserve answers, and they deserve them quickly. With Laserfiche, we coordinate care much faster because patient information is so much easier to find.”