A process automation team at Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale’s School of Medicine uses Laserfiche to automate paper-based tasks. According to Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at the SIU School of Medicine, “The demand for services just keeps growing.”
• Complex processes surrounding procurement, service requests and other business needs lacked consistency and oversight. • The organization sought a solution to automate business processes and streamline them for staff.
RESULTS
• Automated solutions accelerated key workflows including the timesheet process, which was reduced from one week to less than a minute. • Digitization and automation initiatives supported staff satisfaction, new hybrid work models, interoperability and compliance across the organization.
SIU Medicine is a publicly assisted medical school and clinical practice with more than 2,000 providers, researchers and staff members across the state of Illinois. Additionally, SIU is home to a world-class scientific research facility. The facility’s more than 100 active projects complement the institution’s mission of optimizing the health of the people of central and southern Illinois through education, patient care, research and community service.
SIU’s multi-pronged approach requires complex business processes for procurement, service requests and other everyday activities. The organization has been using Laserfiche for digitizing records for the past 10 years, partnering with Laserfiche solution provider TKB Associates. Recently, SIU found a need to modernize processes and expand use of Laserfiche to include Laserfiche Forms and workflow.
“[We saw] an opportunity to get executive buy-in and automate processes like online timesheets,” said Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at SIU Medicine. “And since then, we’ve had people lining up and really wanting us to tackle their projects.”
Today, the organization has embraced process automation across departments, leveraging Laserfiche as a capture, decision-making and workflow engine. With streamlined processes and automated records management that reclaims time for employees to focus on more value-added work, Laserfiche supports the organization’s goals, enabling SIU to sustain high employee and patient satisfaction.
Responding to Change with Tech-driven Solutions
Like healthcare IT teams across the country, SIU Medicine’s Process Automation Team has navigated three significant challenges in recent years:
Staffing and new work models: Healthcare provider shortage remains a growing concern to public health professionals. The industry must adapt to new hybrid and remote work models.
Interoperability: Operating across numerous systems, healthcare organizations need timely and secure access to health data to optimize outcomes for the people they serve.
Compliance: The regulatory landscape is increasingly complex, and requires fast and full adherence to avoid poor outcomes, financial penalties and negative attention.
The Process Automation Team’s commitment to continuous improvement has been a boon to the organization’s ability to respond in innovative ways.
“Laserfiche allowed us to tackle problems and solve them in ways that I don’t think would have been possible otherwise,” said Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at SIU Medicine.
Supporting New Work Models
To support hybrid and remote staff, the organization started by automating the timesheet process with Laserfiche Forms.
“Laserfiche Forms allowed us to help our staff continue to do their jobs from wherever they were,” said Washburn. The team created electronic forms and associated workflows for different types of timesheets in various employee categories.
“SIU’s timesheet process was reduced from 1 week to less than a minute.” align=”left”>The difference in the automated process was significant. “Previously, the manual processes could take a week or longer,” Washburn said. “Today, it takes less than a minute.”
This initial automation project also sparked a shift in which many departments began to see real value in digital transformation.
The selection of timesheets for a pilot was also strategically successful for the Process Automation Team. “Not only was it a huge efficiency gain for us, but it also introduced every single member of our workforce to Laserfiche Forms,” Washburn explained.
The Process Automation Team has continued to take on new projects with the goal of enhancing the employee experience and empowering users to do the work and research that supports the organization’s mission. Meanwhile, Laserfiche tools like electronic forms, automated workflows and electronic records management also support compliance with internal and external requirements, as well as users’ ability to access data across different systems.
Improving Interoperability across the Organization
SIU Medicine has automated both simple processes such as animal requests — enabling researchers to request animals for research projects, with streamlined approvals and documentation— and more complex workflows that are used organization-wide.
For example, purchase orders are now on Laserfiche Forms. What was once a manual process that involved PDFs being emailed or paper forms being passed from desk to desk is now completely digital and automated.
“We created a Laserfiche form that pulls budget purpose numbers and auto-populates the necessary information from another system, which then brings in the fiscal officer that’s responsible for that budget number,” said Mike Overmeyer, data architect at SIU Medicine. The automated system also helps employees by auto-routing POs that may need to go to multiple officers, or that are rejected by one or more officers. “We also give purchasing the ability to run POs by IT or an administrator, if they need to. It’s conditional, and we’re not putting the onus on the employee to make those decisions or execute those manual tasks that can end up causing delays.”
Washburn said that budget purpose numbers are housed in a separate, legacy accounting system that can be leveraged via lookups from Laserfiche Forms. “Users enter a number and it all pre-populates. They click submit and it’s near instantaneous getting to the next person. The end users are amazed that they can do all of this in one place.”
Feedback has been so positive that the project was expanded to include purchases that are made through state procurement cards. “The intent is now to use it for everything that gets purchased for the school, from paper towels and office supplies to computer or laboratory equipment,” Washburn added.
SIU also used Laserfiche to expedite the collection of patient information when a local healthcare provider retired. “There was a local practice where the provider retired, and all of their patients were transitioned into our practice,” Washburn explained. “We had to collect release of information notices, so we quickly deployed a Laserfiche form to streamline that process. Our clinical staff just had to enter the patient’s health record number. Our system integrates with our practice management system to pull everything automatically, which significantly reduced the time it would have taken manually.”
SIU Medicine’s IT department also stood up its own Laserfiche-powered system for entering requests. Employees fill out an electronic form to request a variety of IT services, including reports, software installation, or even new processes through Laserfiche Forms. “Prior to using the forms, we would get requests that were very unstructured, and there might be a lot of follow-up questions to find out, for instance, what reports someone needed, or what we could to do provide support,” said Jeff Wilson, IT director at SIU Medicine.
Other processes that the organization has transformed using Laserfiche include:
Medical provider onboarding
Student registration
Proof of vaccination collection
Program requirements tracking for medical students
Animal research laboratory access requests
Human resources performance evaluations
HR applications for retention bonuses
Position change requests
Invoice distribution
Special event approvals
Equipment move requests
Equipment inventory count certification
Navigating Compliance and Supporting Staff Satisfaction
SIU leverages Laserfiche’s robust records management capabilities on a daily basis for compliance with industry and state requirements. All forms and information generated from Laserfiche processes are saved and managed in the Laserfiche repository, supporting information governance practices at SIU.
“We have well over 2 million documents in our repository,” said Washburn. “If there’s not an existing folder structure for the area that we’re working in, Laserfiche Forms can create it dynamically. We make sure that everything lands in Laserfiche at the end of the day.”
Finally, the organization’s digital efforts have extended beyond process, productivity and compliance improvements, into staff resilience and satisfaction — which has been invaluable in the current healthcare climate. “Working in healthcare, there’s a lot of pressure and demand, so we are constantly thinking about how our staff is doing and what we can do to make the experience better,” Washburn said. “SIU’s executive leadership has emphasized that staff are more contented in their roles when they feel supported and know what they can expect from their leaders. In the most recent employee satisfaction survey, we were rated highest in staff understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and we ranked steady in satisfaction.”
The Translational Pulmonary & Immunology Research Center (TPIRC) deployed process automation and data analytics to develop new treatment protocols for patients suffering from rare and orphan diseases, and used document management technology to scale its practice.
TPIRC founder and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Inderpal Randhawa spent the early part of his career working in intensive care units where he saw enough children die from anaphylactic reactions to food allergens that he began to question conventional treatment protocols. He decided to dedicate his career to changing how healthcare operates. To help the medical team continue to innovate on behalf of patients, TPIRC and its second division, the Southern California Food Allergy Institute, employed Laserfiche to automate treatment plans, reduce the time practitioners spend on paperwork, and share information between clinical and research divisions.
In addition to regular treatments, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the clinic rapidly rolled out a key Laserfiche form and automated business process, which were used to schedule COVID-19 testing for high-risk patients, ensuring continuity of care.
Innovation Fueled by Data Analytics
Healthcare is one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy, yet it’s one of the slowest moving in regards to innovation. TPIRC’s mission is to close that innovation gap by developing new treatment protocols for conditions other physicians no longer try to treat or cure, a category known as orphan diseases. To advance its mission, TPIRC relies on complex clinical processes and huge amounts of data which must be shared efficiently between practitioners.
“What separates us from other physicians who are attempting to do any type of food allergy treatment is data analytics,” said Herman Sandhu, medical liaison at TPIRC. TPIRC physicians compare the results of lab tests to over 1 trillion data points TPIRC has gathered over the years.
Previously, TPIRC managed data for each patient manually, using a spreadsheet program. The laborious process led to employee overtime and made it difficult to identify data or process bottlenecks. The center connected with Laserfiche to implement a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system, then began eliminating siloed programs and automating patient data tracking.
“Document sharing, document storage, and the ability to automate processes are important for us as we expand our program,” said Sandhu. “Finding a way to operate in an efficient manner, with processes as automated as possible, was what led us down the road to adopting an ECM solution. … Once we saw how Laserfiche improved efficiency and gave us access to specific data points, we decided that we would like for each department to start to operate within Laserfiche, using the program for any tasks that could be automated or would benefit from some type of workflow.”
TPIRC implemented a pair of Laserfiche solutions to communicate the results of lab analyses and automate the development of treatment plans for food allergy patients.
Sandhu built the Lab Analysis Workflow, an automated workflow in Laserfiche that routes patients’ lab results to multiple physicians who can provide an assessment or extract information from the results. This allows the team to smoothly communicate their medical and data analysis, and track when each portion of medical analysis is complete.
“Before, I would’ve had to manually check all the dates, whereas Laserfiche gives me the kind of time stamp data that allows me to understand how long processes are taking,” said Sandhu. “Laserfiche allowed me to understand where bottlenecks were occurring and how I could improve the process. And then, the amount of time being spent on each patient did speed up.”
After the Lab Workflow Process is complete, TPIRC practitioners are able to predict the level of allergens that will cause a reaction in a particular patient and develop a course of treatment that will desensitize the patient over approximately 18 months.
Before implementing Laserfiche, Sandhu and Dr. Randhawa manually typed treatment plans to distribute to practitioners as well as to the food lab, which produced the food-based “doses” patients received during each appointment. Not only was the process time consuming for the practitioners, the food lab couldn’t easily export data to understand how many doses of each food they needed to prepare for each day or each appointment.
To digitally transform this process, Sandhu used Laserfiche to create a custom form that included the patient’s identifying number, the type of food they would consume during each visit, the amount of each food dose, and the number of doses need. “Now when our food lab production team needs to know the number of doses to produce, they can just pull a report,” said Sandhu.
The form also allows TPIRC to add to their growing data set, and further increase the effectiveness of their treatments.
Laboratory worker in protective mask using digital tablet
Testing Patients for COVID-19
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the TPIRC team knew they couldn’t interrupt their essential health services. In order to maintain continuity of care while preventing the spread of the disease, TPIRC began testing patients for COVID-19, assisted by a Laserfiche automated business process.
Over two days, Sandhu quickly built a business process in Laserfiche to receive COVID test requests. The process begins with patients filling out a Laserfiche form, providing information including their exposure history, their distance from the TPIRC clinic, and their age.
“With everyone scared and unsure what was going on, everyone wanted to get tested, but certain patients needed to be tested sooner than others,” said Sandhu. “Laserfiche helped us to prioritize patients and keep track of them.”
Through a Laserfiche automated process, TPIRC emailed patients consent forms and invoices prior to testing. Following the test, results were uploaded and routed to the diagnostic manager, who performed a medical analysis then marked the test results as either positive, negative, or invalid. The process then branched off into multiple flows depending on the results: Patients who received negative tests were sent an email, while results that were marked positive received a second look from one of TPIRC’s main providers. If the provider confirmed a positive result, the Laserfiche process prompted a member of the provider team to reach out to the effected family to offer guidance. All results were saved to the repository.
“Our biggest win from Laserfiche came when COVID hit. We’ve tested over 500 patients now,” said Sandhu. “Our patients needed to feel like when they were showing up to a clinic, they were in a safe environment. If we don’t have trust, we can’t offer them treatment.”
Maximizing Efficiency to Provide Care for More Patients
After implementing Laserfiche, TPIRC immediately saw a reduction in the amount of practitioner overtime. Rather than spending two to three hours of overtime per week manually completing essential documentation, providers were able to regain some work-life balance.
At the same time, TPIRC has seen an improvement in the flow of information and data between the center’s divisions. In the healthcare industry, clinical practitioners, medical researchers, and patient advocates generally operate independently of one another, even though their work influences each other’s results. In an effort to realign this disjointed system, TPIRC houses not only clinical providers, but their own research and diagnostic lab, as well as an advocacy center.
“We can push all of our patient data to the researchers, and start to discover new bio-markers that we can use to test patients,” Sandhu said. “This increases our efficiency rate and the scope we’re operating within.”
As the footprint of the organization expands, so will the number of orphan and rare diseases that TPIRC treats as well as the efficacy of the treatments already in place. Dr. Randhawa’s research has already increased the life expectancy of patients suffering from cystic fibrosis from about 15 years to about 25-30. The organization considers this to be a good starting point — and positive progress toward its ultimate goal of leaving no disease behind.
Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine developed an automated patient intake process using Laserfiche Cloud. As a tech-forward, comprehensive family healthcare center that offers a wide range of services — including obstetrics, gynecology, preventative services, aesthetic medicine and family medicine — Nature Coast modernized its patient experience using digital forms, and shortened patient wait times by 75%. Accelerating patient processing proved to be an especially significant benefit as COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. and it became more important to lessen the amount of time patients were in the waiting room.
A Faster, Modern Patient Experience
Located in Tallahassee, Florida, Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine was started by Dr. Chukwuma M. Okoroji to advocate for patients’ health throughout all stages of their life. The practice prides itself on combining technology innovation with a proactive approach to patient care. The practice’s strategic planning led to the implementation of Laserfiche Cloud as a means to reimagine the patient intake process.
“Before using Laserfiche, our patients were instructed to come into the office early to fill out their new patient packet, and bring their license, insurance card — just all these pieces of paper,” said Tamearia Williams, practice administrator at Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine. “They’re filling out demographic information, financial information, etc. They would sit out in the lobby for about 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes longer, to fill out that paperwork.”
Once the front desk staff receives the paperwork, they check to make sure everything is complete and accurate before scanning the packet into the patient chart in the electronic medical record system. While the legacy process was similar to many other clinics’ patient intake process, the Nature Coast team saw opportunities for improvement. By digitizing the intake form, the clinic could reduce errors that may occur when patients fill the form out with a pen and paper, and ensure all necessary information is captured without having to return the form to the patient. Additionally, offering the ability to submit the form online would reduce wait times for all patients and streamline work for the practice.
The Nature Coast team worked with Business Automation Pros, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche Cloud content management and realize their vision for a digital patient intake process.
“Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine is one of the few healthcare facilities in the region that has a digital patient intake process, which is a testament to the organization’s forward-thinking approach, and commitment to providing the best possible experience for patients,” said Ja’Baree Allen, president of Business Automation Pros. “We worked with the Nature Coast team to digitize the process just before COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. and stay-at-home orders began to take effect, enabling the clinic to continue caring for patients without missing a beat.”
Using Laserfiche, Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine replaced the in-person, manual process with an online form that patients can submit before even setting foot in the office.
Once the patient submits the intake packet online, the information is sent to the front desk team, who receive an email notification of the new patient. The information is pushed over to eClinicalWorks, the electronic health records system.
“Our front desk staff just needs to press a button and all the patient’s information is put into eClinicalWorks, which sets up the initial appointment,” Williams said. “There’s no wait time once they arrive. Laserfiche frees up a lot of time for staff and reduces the amount of time patients are in the office.”
The Cloud Advantage
For the team at Nature Coast, selecting a cloud-based content management system aligned well with the practice’s approach to technology. “We’re very tech driven here, so we like cloud-based everything,” Williams said. “We are in this office to treat our patients. So we need our technology to be top-of-the-line, all across the board. We need the ability to be remote, now more than ever. And no matter where we are, we need access to our files and our electronic medical records.”
The need to protect patient information also played a large role in the decision to implement Laserfiche Cloud.
“Being a healthcare organization, data security, HIPPAA and regulatory compliance plays a large role in our decision-making process,” Williams added. “Protecting patient information is just something that we know we must do on a day-to-day basis. Laserfiche offers the ability to see who can see what in what folders on a granular level, which is a big benefit. And Laserfiche records management is DoD-certified, which makes us feel very secure using the system and protecting the information that we are putting into the system.”
Female Doctor Wearing Scrubs In Hospital Corridor Using Digital Tablet
A Prescription for Digital Transformation
Since implementation, Nature Coast has received positive feedback from patients and staff about the new digital intake process. “Patients aren’t sitting out in the waiting room filling out paperwork, and there’s no longer the issue of forgotten driver’s licenses or insurance cards — they’ve already sent us the information we need,” Williams said. “Nothing is missed. They get here and check in, they’re seen, and then they’re on their way.” She estimates that they have shortened wait times for new patients by 75%.
Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine continues to build on the success of the new patient intake process. Human resources and financial are the next departments that will digitize records and processes, with plans to put the clinic’s job application online using Laserfiche Forms. As Nature Coast automates more of the clinic’s repetitive tasks, Williams also plans to take advantage of Laserfiche’s process analytics to help grow the practice.
“We’re hoping to increase our new patient volume,” Williams said. “Once we get more data, and more of the organization starts using Laserfiche, those analytics will be key.”
Contributed By: Tamearia Williams, Practice Administrator, Nature Coast Women’s Care and Family Medicine
Based out of Tallahassee, Florida, Nature Coast Women’s Care and Family Medicine Clinic has a goal of being the first medical practice to go completely paperless across the board. In order to help achieve this goal, the clinic decided to implement Laserfiche Cloud.
The first process tackled by the clinic, with the help of their Laserfiche Solution Provider Business Automation Pros, was the new patient intake process.
“The transition to Laserfiche Cloud was very easy for staff. The system is user friendly and benefits were immediate,” says practice administrator Tamearia Williams.
Prior to this new process, new patients were instructed to come to the office 15 minutes early to fill out paperwork. Once they filled it out, they’d bring it to the front desk employee who would check it for accuracy and scan it into the patient’s chart in the eClinicalWorks healthcare records management system. The downside of this process was that patients would need to spend more time in the lobby, which is not desirable, especially during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, patients would occasionally skip questions on the paperwork, or had indecipherable handwriting.
Patients Can Fill out Intake Forms from Home
If a person wants to become a new patient at the clinic, they click the “Become a New Patient” button on the clinic’s website. This launches a Laserfiche Forms new patient intake process. To make the form easier to fill out, it is divided into nine pages. A button from inside the form links to the appointment scheduling system to make scheduling the first appointment easy.
As part of the process, the new patient is asked to upload a copy of a state issued identification card. He or she is also promoted to agree to and electronically sign numerous disclosures and policies.
New patients fill out the patient intake form digitally before their first appointment.
Once the form is submitted, it is assigned to a front desk staff member for review. The staff member reviews the form for accuracy. Once the form is reviewed and the staff member clicks the Approve button, the information is pushed to eClinicalWorks, from where a new appointment can be created for the patient.
A front desk staff member reviews each incoming new patient intake form.
The process diagram is shown below.
The process diagram of the new patient intake process.
Wait Time for New Patients Has Decreased by 75%
The new patient intake process has reduced the time patients have to spend waiting in the lobby before appointments by 75%. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, this has reduced potential disease exposure for both patients and staff.
Other benefits of the new process include less errors when capturing data such as insurance information. Required fields in the form ensure that no questions are skipped. The front desk staff member doesn’t have to decipher handwriting or spelling errors, and can process new patients much faster.
Interested in seeing how Laserfiche can provide a way to automate your business processes? Schedule a demo to learn more.
As one of the region’s largest nonprofit healthcare and wellness services providers, Florida’s Community Health Centers (CHCFL) is committed to providing personalized, high-quality care to its community members at greatly reduced cost. Managing information efficiently, accurately and responsibly is core to achieving the organization’s mission, making digital transformation increasingly more important as CHCFL responds to the COVID-19 pandemic and growing patient needs.
The organization implemented Laserfiche to automate accounts payable (AP) processes, resulting in CHCFL cutting processing time by 50%. Through its digital leadership, the purchasing department’s role has transcended beyond a necessary part of operations and become a significant source of new efficiencies.
“If you can spend less time pushing paper around, that’s money saved,” said Dee Bradshaw, director of purchasing at Community Health Centers. “Every dollar we save goes into critical resources. We all benefit. That’s our goal — to make things more efficient, to save money without sacrificing quality.”
Eliminating Manual Data Entry and Automating Accounts Payable
Originally called the West Orange Farmworker Health Association, CHCFL was incorporated in 1972 as a nonprofit health organization “to be operated by and for its consumers.” Today, the organization has 16 physical locations across central Florida, providing pharmacy, on-site lab and comprehensive primary care services, in the areas of behavioral health, dentistry, family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, optometry and pediatrics.
“The breadth of our services is amazing,” said Bradshaw. “We see homeless people; we give flu shots to anyone who needs them; we deliver babies; we have optometry and mental health. We’re a medical hub. When somebody has to take two buses and a train to get here, we want to make sure that they get everything they need.”
As a nonprofit providing a wide array of services, CHCFL must procure everything needed for its patients’ care — including pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and equipment — at the highest quality for the lowest cost. Before implementing Laserfiche, the purchasing department used a product that was meant to automate AP processes and minimize data entry, but produced too many errors and didn’t work well with the CHCFL’s Abila MIP Fund Accounting system.
“Even with this other product, we ended up doing a lot of manual data entry, and it was so difficult to use,” Bradshaw said. She got in contact with Hemingway Solutions, a Laserfiche solution provider that focuses on community action partnerships, nonprofits and small businesses.
“Laserfiche was the perfect accounts payable automation software for Community Health Centers because it could accurately capture the necessary data and seamlessly integrate with the Abila MIP system. Plus, the staff found it very easy to use. Now, AP processes are hands-off. Staff is saving time and money, and can focus on providing care and essential services to patients.”
—Larry Phelps, sales and marketing manager at Hemingway Solutions
With the automated ordering process, staff submit a requisition form in the Abila MIP Fund Accounting system, where a PO is created for each vendor. The POs are moved into Laserfiche, which automatically routes them for approval and to the purchasing department to place the order. When the product arrives, staff check in the items against the packing slip and PO. Then the packing slip is scanned into Laserfiche. When the invoice arrives via email it is dropped into Laserfiche and workflow captures the relevant information — including vendor name, invoice number, invoice total, PO number and due date. Through the Abila integration, the automated process is able to look up information related to the purchase, including the vendor name, vendor code, general ledger (GL) code and the purchase order to make sure the invoice matches.
A workflow within the automated business process finds the PO and packing slip and attaches them to the invoice, which are then routed to the appropriate people for approval. Once approved, all data is written into Abila, eliminating manual data entry.
“Everything is automatically stored in a Laserfiche repository that we’ve set up to manage our records,” Bradshaw said. “Everything that’s closed is batched and put into our Abila system.”
Throughout the process, Laserfiche sends automatic notifications to the submitter so they are kept informed. CHCFL plans to give staff the ability to participate in processes via a mobile device, and reduce friction around tasks that can’t be automated.
As an organization that must process thousands of invoices per month and match them to corresponding purchase orders and packing slips, CHCFL has realized significant time and cost savings, reducing complexity for staff who have reclaimed hours previously spent on repetitive manual tasks.
“I cannot fathom processing the current volume of invoices ‘the old way,’” Bradshaw said. “Laserfiche has cut our processing time in half.”
Expanding Digital Transformation Enterprise-wide
Bradshaw and her team have championed digital transformation across CHCFL, and the finance department is now rolling out a Laserfiche solution to support the processing of direct pay invoices that are not PO-based. The organization is also planning to evolve its purchase requisition process with the goal of giving employees a convenient, intuitive Amazon-like experience. As the team has examined its business processes, CHCFL has found efficiencies by eliminating a number of individual software solutions and replacing them with Laserfiche.
“The more things I can do with one software, the less software I have to manage,” Bradshaw added.
CHCFL continues to work with Hemingway Solutions to identify more ways to automate and transform various activities, and create efficiency so that the staff can focus on serving its community with the highest quality care possible.
“Laserfiche is so user friendly — anybody can learn and get it set up quickly,” Bradshaw said. “And business and circumstances are always changing, especially today. You never know when you may need to change something in your system. With other systems I’ve used, making changes to fit your needs is just not intuitive. In Laserfiche, everything is at your fingertips; you’re not going to have to reinvent the wheel if you need to update your process or new needs come up.”
The Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) is eliminating its reliance on paper forms and manual processes in order to keep employees and the public safe, protect information privacy and better enable remote work and communication in the midst of COVID-19.
When the novel coronavirus arrived in Texas, it changed almost everything about the hospital district’s operations, shifting many employees to work from home, and requiring new digital processes for information gathering and sharing. The hospital district had been using Laserfiche to create electronic forms and automate processes since 2019, but the pandemic would reveal new critical use cases for Laserfiche and accelerate digital transformation across the organization.
“Montgomery County Hospital District employees were using Laserfiche before COVID, but we’ve found that Laserfiche made it so much easier to work from home and maintain HIPAA compliance, and protect privacy for ambulance patients,” said Shawn Henners, Electronic Business Process Manager at the hospital district. “If COVID-19 had hit six months ago, we would have had to ramp up a lot faster, and things would have been a lot more chaotic. We’re grateful that we had begun our business process automation and electronic forms initiatives with Laserfiche at the time that we did.”
In the first few weeks of Montgomery County’s COVID-19 response, the hospital district rapidly rolled out a number of Laserfiche electronic forms and automated processes for exposure reporting, employee symptom tracking and case investigation.
Rapid Response: Automating Information Gathering with Exposure Reports
MCHD is responsible for providing indigent care, emergency medical services and public health to Montgomery County, Texas. As a publicly-funded organization, MCHD aims to provide quality care to the county while remaining a good steward of taxpayer dollars. In the past year, MCHD worked with Laserfiche Solution Provider DocuNav Solutions to unveil its first agency-wide online forms and automated workflows to increase access to services while improving efficiency.
“All healthcare organizations need to adjust to new ways of working, and technology is key to their ability to respond quickly to change,” said Cody Bettis Sr., CEO of DocuNav Solutions. “The team at Montgomery County Hospital District has really embraced a digital approach to operations, and their Laserfiche solutions are enabling them to rapidly deploy e-forms and automated workflows that meet changing needs.”
One form that was rolled out over the past year was for infection control. Initially created to report employee exposures to things like HIV or meningitis, the form and automated process behind it was used to report exposure to COVID-19 hit once the virus arrived in Texas.
“We used to use the exposure form once or twice a month,” said Henners. “In March, we had about 30 submissions due to the virus. Having those processes automated already made a huge difference for us.”
With the automated process, the infection control officer is able to document exposures and record them in Laserfiche without significant manual intervention. Information is automatically filed in a standardized manner in compliance with industry regulations, enabling authorized personnel to access the information when it’s needed.
“We were able to quickly give our employee health monitor access to the infection control form, so they can see what’s going on, stay in the loop, run reports and make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks,” Henners added.
The hospital district’s human resources team, which is working remotely, can also easily track processes, file workers compensation claims, and communicate with people in office as a result of Laserfiche forms and the repository.
The Front-line: Symptom Tracking for Safer Work Environments
In addition to tracking exposure, MCHD gathers data on employees’ temperature and symptoms to help protect the health and safety of its workforce — including doctors, nurses and EMTs — and those they serve.
“This has helped tremendously since we have employees spread over the county,” said Henners.
Employees who report to work take their own temperature at the beginning of their shift, and log it along with any symptoms they may be experiencing. They are required to do the screening every 12 hours, so if employees work for 12 hours, they would log the information at the beginning and end of their shifts. Those who work 24-hour shifts perform the screening three times.
If the employee becomes symptomatic, the system advises them on what steps to take next. The forms and workflow also enable dynamic case scenarios, so instructions may differ depending on the individual’s department or role. For instance, the protocol for an employee who reports symptoms in a care unit would look very different from the protocol for an employee in an administrative role.
The information collected provides MCHD insights such as the employee’s symptoms and temperature the day before, or two days ago. To protect employee privacy, only infection control officers have access to individual data, while incident command and executives have access to see totals and trends by unit.
“We connected that information on the backend with our scheduling software to look for people who missed their check-ins, so that supervisors can follow up with them,” said Henners. “We want to keep employees safe. Those who are in essential positions can’t work from home, and so we want to do everything we can in order to make sure we’re not exposing each other, and that employees feel safe when they come to work.”
The project took MCHD about a week to get up and running, and staff has been able to copy and paste from the Laserfiche workflow to repurpose it for other processes.
Case Investigation: Automating Information Gathering and Reporting
MCHD has also implemented a Laserfiche solution to automate case investigation, and the collection of data to inform county decisions about COVID-19. As a manual process, case investigation involved epidemiologists making phone calls twice a day to close contacts of people who had tested positive for COVID-19, to manually enter their symptoms into the system.
“On the public health side, they were monitoring hundreds of case contacts, and it was unsustainable,” said Henners. “We built an electronic form and automated workflows that take a huge burden off of the epidemiologists, who can now better focus on their jobs.”
MCHD rolled out the new electronic form and process which enables people to voluntarily self-report their symptoms every 12 hours. “For every positive case we get, we’ll do an investigation on it in the public health department and document our findings,” Henners said.
The information collected also enables MCHD to create reports in Laserfiche that provide critical insights into the health of the county, while protecting patient privacy in accordance with HIPAA. For example, MCHD staff can pull up reports on how many people are at home under monitoring or how many people have recovered. This aggregated data can be made available to county leaders who are making decisions about reopening, while details about individuals is only available to case investigators who need the information to follow up with patients.
Medical worker approaches car to administer COVID-19 test during the pandemic of COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
The New Normal: Accelerating Digital Transformation
MCHD is in the planning stages of offering telemedicine through an app; as part of this process, a Laserfiche workflow will support the collection, centralization and protection of patient information, signed consent forms and medical charts in the Laserfiche repository.
“We want to make sure that we have continuity of care, and all of the patient’s information is saved in a central location,” said Henners. “We already have a Laserfiche repository set up for patient records with appropriate security settings in place, so we are able to build and adapt processes easily, while staying in compliance with HIPAA requirements.”
Henners and the team at MCHD continue to experience increased adoption of Laserfiche and digital initiatives across the organization as employees discover new ways to streamline manual, paper-driven processes.
“COVID-19 has forced every employee to use Laserfiche for something — whether it’s specifically about COVID or not,” said Henners. For example, MCHD has a Laserfiche Form embedded on the employee website, where employees can ask questions. “If someone doesn’t know who to direct the question to, they can still get a response. If they don’t want to provide an email address, their question will be addressed in our all-staff calls. That’s another way Laserfiche is improving communication.”
MCHD is working to roll out new, key processes such as travel expense reports and inventory checkoff sheets for ambulances. “In the midst of all of this, I’m still getting emails from EMS chiefs and others who have paper forms that they would rather have in Laserfiche,” added Henners. “We are still improving processes, building checks and balances into our system, and maintaining ease of use for everyone.”
Symbria—a leading provider of rehabilitation, wellness and pharmacy programs and services for senior living and post-acute care providers—recently reinvented the way it manages plan of care documents for patients. By using Laserfiche to digitally transform the process, Symbria eliminated repetitive, manual tasks once required of managerial therapists, creating more time for them to focus on providing the best possible patient care. The new, automated process is also scalable, a priority for the company which expects continued growth in the coming years.
Moving Away from Manual Inefficiencies
As part of its comprehensive programming, Symbria provides services to partners in various settings including skilled nursing, assisted living, independent living, outpatient and home health facilities.
Symbria’s rehab program managers—managerial therapists at these facilities—are required to have “plan of care” documents signed by patients’ physicians. Like prescriptions, these documents prescribe occupational therapy rather than medications.
Initially, Symbria was using a manual process to obtain physicians’ signatures. Once a patient was evaluated, the rehab program manager would generate the plan of care document, which must be signed by a physician within 30 days of the evaluation in order to receive reimbursement for services and avoid denials.
Symbria staff would subsequently use implemented therapy software to print the plan of care form. The document would have to be physically carried to the physician within the building, or the rehab program manager would have to search for a fax number online in order to obtain the signature.
After finally receiving the signature, the rehab program manager would scan the paper form and upload it back to the therapy software to be attached to the patient’s file. Additionally, he or she many times would have to email the document or physically carry it to the medical records department at the facility, since a copy was required there as well. The process was time-consuming, particularly for the rehab program manager, who could spend considerable time locating the physician, reminding his/her office repeatedly to sign the form, and more.
“Our old process was completely manual and exceedingly costly to administer,” said Mark Candiotti, national director-operations liaison at Symbria. “It’s a huge burden on our rehab program managers that detracts from their primary job.” Beyond simply being a headache, the process took time from therapists’ primary focus: providing therapy to patients.
Seamless Digital Tools
The Symbria team worked with Laserfiche solution provider Proven IT to implement Laserfiche and automate the plan of care process, eliminating almost all of the manual tasks associated with it for managerial therapists. Today, the rehab program manager generates the plan of care digitally, uploading it to Symbria’s corporate office using a Laserfiche Form. The electronic form is automatically read for the physician’s registration number and other vital information, so the document can be identified and disseminated with minimal human intervention.
The plan of care form also includes a barcode, so once the physician signs it and sends it back digitally, Symbria can quickly correlate it to the appropriate patient. A Symbria data entry staff member verifies the signature and date on the document, then uploads the signed document to the therapy software—essentially removing the rehab program manager from the process. Simultaneously, the document is digitally sent to the medical records department.
The therapist’s role during the process is solely to generate the plan of care form and upload it.
“Our teams has been extremely receptive to the new process since making the switch,” added Candiotti. “We’ve really freed up the rehab program managers so they are really embracing the change. As we continue to use this process and automate more, the expected ROI is high and we expect scalability, which is important to us.”
The new process has already resulted in impressive time savings for Symbria. Since implementing the new automated process, individual rehab program managers save approximately two to five hours each week. With Symbria servicing over 150 clients, this increased efficiency has been significant for the entire organization.
Additionally, Symbria has automated key HR and accounts payable processes. The new optimized, digital processes support the organization’s aim to surround clients and partners with the creative, future-focused solutions they need to thrive in a fast-changing healthcare landscape.
“Digital transformation is a priority for Symbria,” said Hien Do, software development manager at Symbria. “For any company of our size, you’ll have a lot of legacy systems, and all of these efficiency gains through technology, such as Laserfiche, are what we’re pushing toward. We continue to challenge our employees to help us automate any processes they have in mind.”
To learn more about how process automation can support healthcare staff working on the front lines of patient care while supporting compliance and patient confidentiality, visit the Laserfiche Healthcare Solutions page.
“SIU’s timesheet process was reduced from 1 week to less than a minute.” align=”left”>The difference in the automated process was significant. “Previously, the manual processes could take a week or longer,” Washburn said. “Today, it takes less than a minute.”
