Document Management System

The sheer volume of paperwork is overwhelming, given that hospitals and clinics are required to maintain all patient records for a minimum of 10 years after a patient’s final visit. To complicate matters, the Affordable Care Act has instituted additional regulations for record keeping.

A hospital or a healthcare industry or a medical office always has a lot of paperwork done. The paper documentation is a hassle for the patient and for the professionals working there. Paperwork like health history, insurance cards, vaccinations, test results, diagnosis codes, lab results, payment receipts and so on. Who would like to go through all these piles just to search for one paper that can be retrieved with a click instead of going through the file cabinets using a record management software?

So why should healthcare businesses bother implementing a document management system? Below are reasons why it’s a good idea to switch out paper-based processes to electronic form.

• Reduced costs

Hospitals and clinics end up spending less money on equipment (printers, copiers and fax machines) and materials (paper and ink). They require less physical storage space for record keeping since digitized records are kept on onsite servers or in the cloud. And they need fewer employees to handle and retrieve documents.

• Easy to implement and manage

The process of a DMS is simple: Paper documents are generated or come into the office, clinic or hospital, and are scanned into the system. Each scanned document is indexed and attached to either an existing electronic patient record or a new one can be created.

• Reduced Storage Needs

You can store all your patient records in an on-site server which hardly requires any physical space. If you go for cloud storage system, it doesn’t require any physical space, unlike those big storage boxes or file cabinets where you put the hard copies of documents.

• To Increase Productivity

Document Management System has reduced the access time to patients file. You can search any file by just looking for the search key. Every document converted into electronic form has unique identity number and these docs can be searched with various search terms. Physicians and administrator can retrieve a patients records within seconds giving them more time to concentrate on value-added activities.

• Increase Security and Maintain Greater Compliance

Unfortunately too many healthcare providers have to deal with lost, damaged, or destroyed files due to fire, flooding, mold, and other natural disasters. By transitioning to electronic DMS, your organization can avoid document damages, easily maintain off-site copies of files (something almost impossible or very costly with paper), and have increased security around your files.

Another benefit to a document management software is that every action taken with your documents will be recorded with the employee’s ID and a date and time stamp. You are able to designate who has authority to view documents and what actions they can take. For example, the billings department can be restricted to the documents that pertain to billings.

• Create and Retain Happier Patients

Mistakes are unavoidable when dealing with vast amounts of paper documents. Too much paper causes clutter, and clutter increases the occurrence of lost or misplaced files and pertinent documents. Therefore, a Document Management System aids in reducing adverse drug events, such as improper dosage of medications. If files or documents are misplaced, physicians are not able to know what medications a patient may have adverse reactions to. This increases patient safety and protects physicians from potential regulatory and legal sanctions. This will result in happier patients with more accurate records.

• To Maintain Regulatory Compliance

Having secured documentation is severe regulatory compliance. A document management system will continuously convert papers into electronic documents. With DMS you can regulate data access and increase privacy and confidentiality. This way DMS will assure regulatory compliance and also ensure essential security feature, enhanced auditing and disaster recovery.

• Faster processing and fewer errors

While paper documents need to be physically transported from one department to the next, retrieving records through a digital document management system can be done in seconds. And multiple departments can access and update the same records simultaneously.

Easily integrates with existing systems

A DMS can be easily integrated into most office systems. This means that doctors and administrators don’t need to spend valuable time on training for a new system.

One thing’s for sure, the investment will be well worth it. Done in this way, you'll gain productivity and efficiency, allowing your facility to reap ever-increasing gains as you move forward with implementation.