Today, upwards of 25% of Healthcare providers total expenses are in administrative costs. HIPAA has ensured that the administrative costs in time and effort required to manage documents and records will not diminish in the foreseeable future.
The Affordable Care Act has further increased the need for healthcare providers to maintain effective and accurate electronic document management System.
To make compliance easier, more accurate, and less expensive, healthcare providers are increasingly turning to electronic management systems. Here are the top 5 reasons why healthcare services are choosing an electronic document management system.
Electronic Document Management Systems Reduce Your Costs
There are several ways that electronic document management system will save your organization money. First, you will reduce the materials and equipment needed by reducing printed pages, the cost of the paper, ink cartridges, and equipment.
Your offices will need fewer printers, scanners, copy machines, filing cabinets, and manila folders. The average 4-drawer filing cabinet costs a company up to $25,000 just to fill with documentation.
You can reduce your needed storage space. Storage space accounts for massive amount of office and facility square footage. By going paperless, you can reduce the filing cabinets, room, and possibly entire floors that you have dedicated to paper storage. With a well-designed document management processes, you can reduce the number of staff that you utilize to retrieve and find patient files.
Increase Security and Maintain Greater HIPAA 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.
Reduce Errors and Increase Your Capacity Through Faster Processing
Typically paper documents must be hand-carried between individuals, departments, and buildings for processing. This workflow can take hours—or, in some cases, days—to accomplish. Through an electronic document management system, these same documents can be assigned to the correct individuals or departments for processing and approval in seconds.
Furthermore, separate departments can process the applicable documents for the same patient file simultaneously. The billing department can update financial information at the same time healthcare employees update the medical data, increasing efficiency substantially.
Create and Retain Happier Patients
Take advantage of all of these benefits. As your facility spends less time on document management and is able to reduce the amount of time for regular operational functions, your staff will be able to focus more completely on your patients. This will result in happier patients with more accurate records.
Make Easy Transitions
DMS will allow you to more easily take incremental steps which will reap immediate benefits to a workflow system, without making it a large project. Most healthcare providers chose to implement their DMS in phases. This allows them to realize the immediate benefits and start taking advantage of additional features over time.
Transition first small batches of current files and incorporate more batches until all current files are being managed electronically. Then start phasing most recent (and most likely to be active again) files to the electronic document management system. Add automated retention guidelines and enjoy the immediate time savings.
Bonus: Avoid HIPAA Penalties
By incorporating automatic compliance features that reflect your policies, you can more easily stay within HIPAA’s rules and guidelines. Through automatic retention, document protection, and role-based security, you can make sure that only those authorized to view your files can view them.
Additionally, good electronic document management system will provide off-location backup services that will ensure you have your records for as long as HIPAA requires. Versioning ensures that all document changes are recorded, and audit logs maintain a record of every person and action who has accessed your filing cabinet, giving you greater transparency.
About eFileCabinet
Since 2001 eFileCabinet has been an innovator in document management software. eFileCabinet provides document management software for over 150,000 businesses and continues to innovate new tools and features that make document management simple and enhance business growth. As the recipient of multiple awards, eFileCabinet is committed to helping you to do more.