Stop the paper chase! Document management for today's hospitals
Healthcare Financial Management

Every day, hospitals face a tremendous irony: using the latest technology to diagnose and care for patients and then using the most archaic modes--filling out forms manually, sending faxes, copying and filing millions of paper forms each year--to get reimbursed.

The paperwork burden in hospitals is obvious. Unlike just about every other industry, health care still relies on an old-fashioned paper/fax/phone transaction process. That process is expensive: it costs nearly $250 billion to process 30 billion healthcare transactions each year. Plus, the average ratio of staff handling paperwork to doctors can be as high as 1:1. The rules and instructions for Medicare and Medicaid are so unwieldy that they are three times the size of the IRS code. According to one industry study, 86 percent of mistakes made in the healthcare industry are administrative in nature. (a)

So, it's not much of a surprise that hospitals have long been exploring ways to minimize that paperwork through document management systems. The right system can decrease claims denials, decrease accounts receivable, improve patient and employee satisfaction, save storage fees, enhance patient care, and cut the medical records ending backlog. With all of those benefits, why haven't all hospitals implemented a document management system?

Identifying the Challenges