Accounts Payable Transformation Supports Community Health Centers Mission to Provide High-Quality Care

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.”

Learn more about Laserfiche AP automation and other core solutions to modernize your healthcare organization.

Montgomery County Hospital District Scales Crisis Response Capability with Process Automation

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.”

How Symbria Reimagined Patient Care

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.

How Symbria Inc. Uses Laserfiche to Streamline Plans of Care for Patients

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Hien Do, Software Development Manager; Boris Remus, Senior Software Engineer, Symbria Inc.

Symbria Inc. provides therapy services to hundreds of skilled nursing facilities. The organization was challenged with manual paper processing prior to implementing Laserfiche. One area that was especially paper heavy and inefficient was obtaining the required physician signatures and dates on the patient plans of care forms.

Within 30 days from the start of a patient’s care, their treatment plan must be approved by a physician or reimbursement for the treatment may be denied. Previously, the Rehab Program Manager printed a patient’s plan of care from the therapy software. The plan of care was then hand delivered or faxed it to the appropriate physician for a signature. Once the signatures were obtained, the Rehab Program Manager scanned in the plan and attached it to the patient’s record back into the therapy software. The program manager would also have to fax or hand-deliver the plan of care to the medical records department at the facility in order for the payments to be processed correctly.

Rehab Program Managers, who are highly trained therapists themselves, spent a lot of their time performing administrative tasks like tracking which documents haven’t been signed and following up with physicians who did not sign the plans of care. Facilities vary greatly in size which means some process a small number of documents a week, while others can process in excess of 100. This volume resulted in a significant amount of program manager time investment.

Symbria evaluated the entire process and decided to use Laserfiche to optimize it. The current process transfers most of the work from the Rehab Program Manager to the staff at the corporate office and uses Laserfiche Forms and Workflow to automate routing and faxing.

The Plan of Care is Routed and Faxed Electronically

The new process still starts with the Rehab Program Manager generating the plan of care document, but now, he or she uploads it to a Laserfiche form. From there, everything is handled by staff at the corporate office.

Once the plan of care is uploaded and the form is submitted, the plan of care is saved in the repository and Laserfiche Workflow creates and stamps a barcode onto the document. The barcode uniquely identifies the plan of care. Workflow then runs a series of checks to make sure that the information in the plan of care is correct. Workflow checks that:

  • The physician identification number has 10 digits
  • The patient name is valid
  • The therapy discipline is valid
  • The date is valid

 

If the plan of care does not pass all the checks, then it must be validated manually. The corporate processing staff performs the validation task in Laserfiche Forms.

Once the plan of care is validated, Laserfiche Workflow looks the physician up in the database to obtain his or her fax number. The document is then faxed digitally to the fax number using a faxing service.

When the physician signs and faxes the document back, Symbria receives an electronic version of the document from the fax service that is then imported into Laserfiche using the Import Agent. Workflow reads the barcode to associate the document with the original and routes it to the processing staff at the corporate office to verify the document is correctly signed and dated. Once that step completes, the processing staff attaches the document to the patient’s record in the therapy software and Workflow sends a copy to the medical records department at the appropriate skilled nursing facility.

If the physician doesn’t return the plan of care in a timely matter, the corporate staff member gets a task assigned to him or her in Forms to follow up with the physician. When opening the task, the staff member sees helpful information, such as the physician’s fax and phone numbers. The physician is also automatically notified through Workflow on a regular basis if he or she hasn’t sent back the signed plan of care.

Automation Saves Each Facility an Average of Five Hours a Week

On average, with this automation, each facility saves five hours a week by not having to manually fax and deliver plans of care. The largest benefit, though, is that the Rehab Program Manager no longer has to obtain physician’s signatures. Instead of chasing physicians down, the Rehab Program Manager can focus more on patient care. Laserfiche also gives the company stringent control over document access, which is a must in the heavily regulated healthcare industry.

Alabama Department of Mental Health Digitizes Patient Records

The Alabama Department of Mental Health provides critical services to over 200,000 patients annually at hospitals and clinics across the state. With medical archives dating back over 150 years, the agency must manage patient data in a manner that enables staff to easily and quickly find the information they need.

Implementing Agency-Wide Records Management

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act asked all organizations, such as ours, to demonstrate meaningful use for information and have electronic health records to keep funding with Medicare and Medicaid,” said Cindy Shrum, Director of Information Systems. “We want to maintain our Medicare or Medicaid funding, but having an electronic records management system is also just easier. We’re able to get the information when we need it.”

Upon the recommendation of the State of Alabama, the agency selected Laserfiche as its records management solution. Laserfiche’s ease of use and competitive pricing meant the department could more productively use federal funding to create an agency-wide records management system for patient records.

Improving Patient Care through Staff Efficiency

The department partnered with the state, which was already using Laserfiche, to procure the software; this partnership also shortened implementation time and improved data sharing. The department has since digitized all medical records at Bryce Hospital, the state’s oldest and largest inpatient psychiatric facility.

“We’ve got them organized so you can see the physical history, the summary, and the progress notes,” Shrum says. “What I like about Laserfiche is that in just three clicks, we’re in the electronic health record. For a clinician, especially our doctors, that time matters to them.” Benefits include:

  • • Eliminated the need to build a warehouse for patient archives, freeing up additional funds for patient services
  • • Created efficient process to automatically digitize, organize and file full charts of new and archived patient data in a shared repository accessible to clinicians and nurses across departments
  • • Integrated document management with the agency’s CoCentrix medical system eliminates repetitive data entry
  • • Increased compliance with federal laws, ensuring continued Medicaid and Medicare funding

These financial and operational improvements have ultimately enabled the Alabama Department of Mental Health to provide better quality health care and a greater volume of patient visits. “We started out small, but the potential is unlimited,” Shrum says.

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Saving $1.5 Million with Laserfiche

SEPT is one of the largest and highest-performing national healthcare organizations in the United Kingdom. Providing services for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities, SEPT serves a population of 1.5 million across three counties, with over 3,500 employees and an operating a budget of more than $300 million.

Mergers and acquisitions account for much of SEPT’s growth, but innovation, says Dominic Malvern, Head of Information Systems Development, accounts for much of its ongoing success. “It’s never been a stereotypical government ‘Mental Health Organization,” Malvern says.

In fact, when SEPT transitioned from a purely state-funded trust to a more privatized “Foundation Trust,” one of its primary initiatives was to partner with Adobe to develop an EMR system using Adobe LiveCycle products supported by a Laserfiche ECM system from Laserfiche reseller Fortrus. Malvern saw the chance to hit the ground running with a pilot project in the trust’s Forensic Services Department, which was moving to a new building as part of a modernization program.

“It was the ideal opportunity for us to modernize how our live patient records were accessed, as it was apparent that continuing with a manual process was not in keeping with the state of the art service we provide to our patients,” he says. That process, he adds, had remained manual by default because the legacy imaging system in Forensics didn’t meet the Trust requirement for working with live patient records.

“A single patient record could run for several years, sometimes through a person’s entire adult life, so it would extend into several volumes,” he explains. “Constant patient monitoring meant frequent updates to records for many reasons such as observation or treatment plans, sometimes every 15 minutes.”

A Pilot That Needed To Fly 24-7

When choosing a department to establish proof-of-concept before deploying a full-scale EMR system, SEPT couldn’t have chosen a more challenging one than Forensics Services—or one in which the impact of a successful ECM implementation would be so pronounced.

Malvern worked with Fortrus’ Steve Livermore to implement a Laserfiche pilot system for active patient records management system using:
  • Laserfiche Quick Fields advanced capture to input, sort and file the steady stream of patient information.
  • Laserfiche Workflow to automatically route information for reviews, approval and distribution.
  • Laserfiche Web Access to allow both remote deployment and access to the system over SEPT’s broad geographic service area and affiliated agencies.

SEPT implemented a clinical pilot project in 2009 and, over the course of a year, the new system kept up with the staff’s round-the-clock demands, amassing over 500,000 documents in the Laserfiche repository in the process.

Malvern says the real operational breakthrough was having a system aligned with the increasing need for information sharing between regional service offices. “Increasingly we have to work on a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency basis, so having shared but secure access to patient records and notes is vital,” he says.

From an IT perspective, Laserfiche Web Access gave the organization one more tool to centrally control system administration while capitalizing on Laserfiche’s flexibility to configure various access levels remotely.

“Being able to deploy the system through our server or using web browser options allowed us to control the type of access we wanted to make available,” says Malvern. “Web-based deployment is key because of the ease of maintenance when working with such a large group of users. Updates and upgrades would be unwieldy to deploy with a large number of single desktop clients.”

Going from EMR to ECM Saves $1.5M

The vision to extend Laserfiche from its supporting role in SEPT’s EMR project to a full-scale ECM deployment came with the support of Fortrus’ Livermore, who helped Malvern make the case to SEPT’s directors to implement Laserfiche for the trust’s non-clinical side.

“Once I heard the directors were looking at other solutions, and knowing what Laserfiche was capable of, it seemed a waste to restrict its application to purely clinical processes,” says Malvern. “Of course, it seemed an even bigger waste to spend further public money on more software that would be superfluous when we had a perfectly good system that would likely be better than anything else on the market.”

Now moving ahead with full-scale deployment of its Laserfiche Rio system to what will eventually be 3,000+ users, SEPT is effectively standardizing its information management on Laserfiche, eliminating the need for multiple departmental systems—and their corresponding service agreements and upgrades.

“Initially Laserfiche was envisaged solely as a clinical and medical records solution, but we have now realized that it can be a complete multi-functional document management system for the whole organization,” he says.

“We’ve begun implementation in non-clinical areas such Human Resources and Finance, as well as Vehicle Service Management, where we’re using Laserfiche Quick Fields and Laserfiche Workflow to automate our lease applications.” Additionally, another major project is underway to use Laserfiche to meet retention regulations for information governance of corporate records.

“From a roll-out prospective, it makes life much easier to have one multi-tasking system that all employees are trained on no matter what their function. It makes live support a far more streamlined and efficient activity,” he explains.

Malvern says the efficiency—and cost-savings—are starting to add up. “Within 18 months to two years we’ll be able to replace all our legacy imaging systems with Laserfiche. Implementing Laserfiche and its enterprise licensing enables SEPT to discontinue several annual contracts and service agreements. It also delivers savings on labor and print costs for information requests, as well as paper document archive and retrieval services. Realistically, this will save us US$1.5 million over the next three fiscal years,” he says.

SEPT’s Run Smarter Philosophy

Malvern’s advice for successful implementation and adoption from his experience with SEPT’s jump from departmental EMR to organization-wide ECM is simple. “Be open-minded in your approach. Don’t just try to replicate what you already have; Laserfiche can do so much more! Even a year down the road we’re still discovering new things it can do for us. It has great functionality combined with enormous flexibility that’s capable of revolutionizing your whole approach to records and document management—both live and archival,” he says. “We wish we’d discovered it sooner!”

Computerized Management Services

For Computerized Management Services, a medical management company that focuses on meeting the needs of radiologists, technology paves the path to a profitable future.

“Because we’ve never lost a customer and have extremely low employee turnover as well as strong long-term relationships with all of our key suppliers, we have the means to invest in the technology necessary to build a world-class infrastructure to meet the future needs of our clients,” says President Tom Brajkovich.

This forward-thinking approach led the company to implement Laserfiche enterprise content management back in 2006. “There’s a lot of miscellaneous paper associated with medical billing, a lot of non-standardized communications coming from patients, payers and providers,” Brajkovich explains. “We knew that digitizing the paper and automating associated processes would make us more efficient.”

Prior to implementing Laserfiche, Computerized Management Services housed its paper archives in bankers boxes at offsite storage lockers, making it difficult for staff to find older documents. Files that had yet to be reviewed for coding and billing purposes were kept in filing cabinets, creating bottlenecks when documents were misplaced and limiting the management team’s visibility into the company’s overall workflow.

To facilitate access and improve productivity, the company now uses Laserfiche to process, manage and store four main document types:
  • Reports and face sheets from providers.
  • Explanation of benefits forms (both paper and electronic) from payers.
  • Credentialing documents from providers.
  • Internal training documents.

“We’re constantly scanning, uploading and processing information,” Brajkovich says.

Documents are processed and stored using Laserfiche Quick Fields 8, a high-volume capture and processing tool, and Laserfiche Workflow 8, a business process management tool. These tools eliminate the need for manual data entry and filing by:
  • Automatically extracting metadata from documents.
  • Auto-populating index fields.
  • Creating new folders.
  • Auto-filing documents.

For a company that receives thousands of documents a day from more than 100 locations in California and Arizona, this automation results in a big productivity boost. It also makes it easy for employees to retrieve documents by conducting simple field and text searches.

Processing EOBs with Laserfiche

Further enhancing productivity, Computerized Management Services uses Laserfiche to manage the explanation of benefits (EOB) forms that most insurers still send in paper format.

“We use Laserfiche Quick Fields to convert paper EOBs into usable data, and Laserfiche Workflow to facilitate EOB processing,” explains Denise Van, Vice President of Operations.

Via document shortcuts, the company uses Laserfiche Workflow to route EOBs to the appropriate client teams for processing. Client team personnel work with dual screens, so they’re able to view a document on one screen while performing data entry into the company’s CPU billing software on the other.

Although CPU and Laserfiche aren’t yet integrated, the Laserfiche Entry ID for each document is logged in each patient’s record in CPU so that it is easily retrievable. After the EOBs have been processed, Laserfiche Workflow removes the EOB shortcuts from the client team folders. Laserfiche Workflow then archives the EOBs by date of service.

Laserfiche Workflow Automation Accelerates Coding

Computerized Management Services also uses Laserfiche in conjunction with A-Life, its computer-assisted coding system.

When the company receives new information from a client site, it imports it into Laserfiche using either Laserfiche Import Agent, which captures electronic faxes, or Laserfiche Snapshot, which converts electronic documents into TIFF images. Documents are then processed by Laserfiche Quick Fields and exported to A-Life. Once documents have been coded in A-Life, Laserfiche Workflow archives the documents.

The biggest benefits of Laserfiche, however, are felt when the company can’t use A-Life. “If a facility changes the format of its reports or face sheets, it takes time to reprogram A-Life,” says Brajkovich. “When that happens, Laserfiche takes over.”

According to Van, employees need a mere 24 hours to complete the coding process in A-Life. When done on paper, the process takes 5-10 days. When used as the company’s “coding back up,” Laserfiche enables staff to complete the coding process in 48-72 hours.

“Laserfiche helps us solve problems,” says Van. “If we had to code on paper every time a facility changed its format, we’d lose a lot of time.”

The coding process in Laserfiche works as follows:
  • Documents are imported into Laserfiche using Import Agent or Snapshot.
  • Documents are processed by Laserfiche Quick Fields, metadata is applied and Laserfiche Workflow moves document shortcuts to the Coder folder for processing.
  • The coding manager assigns work and Laserfiche Workflow moves the folder to the assigned coder.
  • The assigned coder codes the document using the preview pane in Laserfiche, adding coding metadata to the Laserfiche template.
  • Laserfiche Workflow then moves the document to the billing team, which exports it to CPU for processing.
  • Once the completion criteria have been met, Laserfiche Workflow archives the documents.

“Laserfiche Workflow is a wonderful tool,” says Van. “We rely heavily on it.”

The Key to Going Digital

Brajkovich and Van stress that Computerized Management Services’ success with Laserfiche is the result of a phased approach to implementation and training. They first worked with Laserfiche reseller JPI Data Resource to configure the system to their specifications, and then they trained their staff.

“We didn’t roll out everything at once,” says Brajkovich. “Implementing the capabilities of Laserfiche slowly allowed us to make sure that adjusting to the new system didn’t slow us down.”

Initially, staff learned how to use Laserfiche to search and retrieve digital documents. Once the company rolled out Laserfiche Workflow, Brajkovich and Van took a train-the-trainer approach, working with key staff from the data processing and client teams to ensure that they were comfortable with the system and able to show their team members how to perform their various tasks.

Today, as always, the company is in the process of improving its workflows. “Continuous improvement is important to us,” says Brajkovich. “In order to ensure that we offer truly exceptional service to clients in the heavily nuanced field of radiology, we constantly look for ways to fine tune our processes and our use of technology.”