Atlanta - Healthcare organizations making the switch to digital can take the lead from White Memorial Medical Center (WMMC).  Administrators at the Los Angeles-based hospital say Xerox Corporation's DocuShare Enterprise Content Management Platform allows doctors to access records in seconds – not hours – to efficiently monitor and serve the more than 17,000 patients the hospital sees annually.

"DocuShare has provided us with a single, HIPAA compliant view of all patient data, without the hassle of faxing and shipping hard copy records," said Mara Bryant, associate vice president, Organizational Excellence and Health Information Management, WMMC. "We now have access to a patient's history within seconds, which reduces costs and improves quality of care and patient safety."

By scanning and storing paperwork directly into DocuShare, the hospital saved as much as $200,000 on storage fees and administrative costs per year, reduced insurance claims denials and improved billing processes.

How It Works
The system works by combining DocuShare with WaterWare's Aquifer Electronic Health Records (EHR) system and Xerox multifunction printers (MFPs) –  equipped with Extensible Interface Platform that lets independent software vendors create customized applications that are easily accessible from the MFP touch screen.  New patients are assigned a barcode for all of their information, which gets scanned directly into the appropriate medical file stored in DocuShare. WMMC has also done production-level scanning of large volumes of older patient files.

In addition, DocuShare integrates with WMMC's current EHR system. The system is used for daily patient care, but can connect to DocuShare to retrieve back file information, such as past medical records, release forms and billing data.  Users in WMMC's admissions, patient financial services and emergency departments can effortlessly scan up to 60,000 paper documents per month into DocuShare.

Prescription Processing
Using WaterWare's Nile Pharmacy software and DocuShare, nurses can automatically submit pharmacy orders from one of the hospital's 25 prescription scanning kiosks.  The pharmacy can now fill an average of 900 prescriptions per day in half the time. All patient data is kept secure in DocuShare's files to meet regulatory requirements.

"The switch to digital can seem like a daunting task for healthcare providers," said Valerie Mason Cunningham, vice president, Healthcare Industry, Xerox Corporation. "However, a solution like DocuShare allows healthcare professionals to easily gain control of the mass amounts of paperwork flowing throughout their organizations – saving precious time, resources and costs."