Administrative
costs account for over 25% of the total expenditures of healthcare clinics and
hospitals. A large portion of this goes to paperwork involved with billing,
coding, records, and insurance. Each patient visit adds to the already voluminous
paperwork healthcare providers have to deal with on a daily basis. What’s more
is these medical facilities are obligated to maintain all these records for at
least 10 years after any patient’s final visit. With the amount of information that
practitioners have to manage, how do you ensure your own practice’s
reliability, accuracy, and efficiency in keeping patient records?
Many
healthcare providers are discovering the benefits of digitizing their patient
records and other related paperwork and adopting the appropriate document
management system, which, in a lot of ways help reduce the cost of paperwork
management and at the same time ensure document processing speed and accuracy.
Cost
efficiency is one of the most obvious benefits of document management systems.
Facilities that have already switched to digital record keeping systems cut
spending substantially in terms of reduced material and equipment costs,
reduced storage needs, reduced retrieval fees, and smaller staffing costs. Well-designed
document management
systems also ensure
information security and regulatory compliance. Paper documents are prone to damage
due to natural disasters and accidents, ranging from mold to fires, flooding,
and other incidents. Physical damage to paper-based documents are usually
irreversible rendering patient information non-recoverable. Electronic document
and file systems have redundant storage features and highly efficient disaster
recovery solutions, making sure that all information stored can be recovered
one way or another. Even when a particular server fails, there are digital
backups that practitioners can turn to so important information can be
recovered when needed.
Document
management systems also provide a level of protection no paper-based file
system can offer, that is a detailed chain of file custody, wherein timestamps
and employee names are recorded on each stage of the document processing. This
means extensive protection of patient information confidentiality.
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