Swedish Medical Center, with four hospitals and 40 clinics in and around Seattle, has gotten its arms around patient information by taking charge of its document management. Scanners are a critical piece of the strategy.
Though most people might not think scanners would make a difference in patient care, at Swedish Medical Center they have. The center rolled out its first Fujitsu scanner at one of its clinics in 2005 and now has 240 scanners in use throughout the system.
“The foundation of patient care begins with the administrative staff,” said Cathy Johnson, who implemented the scanning system at Swedish Medical. “If they’re not supplied with the proper tools to do their jobs quickly and effectively, the entire office is affected – doctors can’t do their jobs without consent forms or HIPAA records, lab technicians can’t file their test results. In making sure that our team has the highest quality tools to communicate their health records management needs, our patients receive the best care possible.”
The document scanners deployed at various locations through the Swedish Medical system have digitized more than 4 million documents – including insurance cards with gum, lint and dirt on them – and eliminated the need for photocopying and faxing, said Nancy Gladish, director of health information management at Swedish Medical.
The scanners work in tandem with the network’s Epic electronic health record system.
Cornerstone Health Care, a 125-physician multi-specialty group in High Point, N.C., also uses Fujitsu scanners in tandem with an EHR (from Allscripts).
“The Fujitsu scanners have been reliable workhorses in every sense of the word,” said CIO Tim Terrell. “We scan more than 10,000 documents per day and the ability of multi-specialty clinics across multiple sites to have a single chart for each patient is a powerful thing.”
“With the EMR system in place, we at Swedish no longer have to deal with the inefficiency of massive amounts of paper documentation,” Johnson said. “Now when a patient comes in, we just capture the documents, verify the quality of the scanned images and upload them directly into the patient’s EMR – making them secure and instantly available throughout the system.”
Johnson and Gladish are already at work on their next project – converting Swedish Medical’s consent from paper to digital.
