Case Studies

The Problem

Santa Barbara's St. Francis Medical Center wanted to improve the time required to pull document records for patients and significantly cut down costs for storage and retrieval of documents and computer output.
"Keeping cost down for running a hospital is a primary concern for us these days," Dave Glyer, Chief Financial Officer of St. Francis Hospital said. "But at the same time, we cannot sacrifice the quality of our service. Obviously, in an environment such as a hospital, the patient record has to be there when it is needed."
Billing information and other patient records were saved on tapes which were stored on-site and are reloaded on the computer when needed. Other medical records such as lab reports, admission records, patient histories, etc. were stored as paper hardcopy in filing cabinets. With document retrieval times running into hours and days, the Hospital was hard pressed to meet their patients'needs. For a Document Management System to work in St. Francis' environment, it had to store both document images and computer output, be easy to use, and work with the existing application.

The Solution

Image-X proposed a distributed scanning, indexing and retrieval system which is integrated with the existing (industry standard) Meditech application.

By using a completely automated process for optical recognition and indexing of scanned images, Image-X's solution avoided duplication of data entry as well as errors that may result during this effort. The automated process allows the organization to cut down on their cost of indexing, storage and retrieval of scanned documents. Once the desired patient record is on the screen in the Meditech window, the user presses one key to start the scanning process. The documents are scanned and indexed to the Patient Unit I.D. which is a unique identifier and is generated every time a patient visits the hospital. The documents can be further sub-indexed into categories such as Lab Reports, Admission Forms, etc. The documents are first stored on the local hard disk for quality assurance. This allows the scanning operator to re-scan the documents if the quality of the scans is not satisfactory. After all the documents have been satisfactorily scanned, they can be transferred over to the optical storage device. This is achieved through a batch process, which allows transfer of documents automatically. This process ensures that the documents are transferred at off-peak hours when the jukebox is not busy and network traffic is not very heavy. The computer output from the Meditech application is automatically processed by Image-X's OpStor software. The records to be purged from the Meditech application are dumped into a directory where they are automatically processed. OpStor parses the computer output and automatically indexes each record by Patient Account Number, and Patient Unit Number. These records are then saved on dedicated platters on the same optical jukebox, where the document images are stored. This allows even the purged records to be on-line and eliminates reloading of indices for the purpose of searching the purged records.

Image-X provided a centralized display Information Manager for transparently accessing data regardless of data type, including the scanned documents and the Computer Output. The users can log into the Meditech application directly, using the Information Manager. The Meditech application is then displayed in a full window. Once the desired patient record is on the screen, the user presses one key to retrieve document images.

The retrieval operation is completely transparent; the user does not need to know where the documents are stored on the network. The savings in retrieval time are enormous. Now the users are able to pull the computer output as well as the patient records within a few seconds. Since the documents are saved on Write Once Optical Media, the integrity of the data is ensured.

The physical storage requirements are also cut down to a minimum. Because the Image-X document management software provides storage of any data type, users can seamlessly retrieve document images or computer output from the same computer. Our OpStor module also allows use of existing ASCII terminals to retrieve COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk) data.

Integrating the existing Meditech application with the Document Management System allowed users to learn only one key in order to access the document images while using the existing application. Since the hospital personnel are already well trained in using the Meditech application, this allowed them to use the imaging system from day one. This was amply conveyed when Mr. Dave Glyer was able to demonstrate the capability of the document management system to the board of directors after a few hours of training. Image-X's network topology also alleviated any concerns for future expansion capability to provide storage of radiological reports and other data.

The components of the imaging and Document Management System include one scanning station, computer output to optical storage software, scanning software, viewing software and document management software. The scanned documents are stored on a HP optical jukebox with a capacity of 40 GB connected to a Data General AviiON 4300.
Having the ability to respond quickly to medical record requests improves customer service in the competitive health care market. Adding document imaging and computer output storage to the existing application reduced the record management cost to the Hospital. Converting paper documents into electronic documents allowed clerical staff and doctors to be more productive.