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Thread: Document scanning

  1. #1
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    Document scanning

    Does anybody use a scanner to save patient records? I know it wouldn't qualify as an EMR system, but it does seem like an easy way to get a paper record into a computer for retrieval later.

    Any experience with document management software?

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    Suspect keeping it as a picture would take so much hard drive storage, it would be impractical.

  3. #3
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    Do it all of the time, but not with prescriptions. In our office, we try to save every document to the hard drive. It is wonderful. The filing cabinets are right in front of my cubicle and I still really prefer to get the electronic copy. With our printer, it scans too, so it takes like no time to do it.

    I just looked up the size of a sample document 199kb for a five page document. So your average one is probably 40kb. Not bad at all. So 1gb can fit 25,000 RX's.

    Another advantage is if you have multiple offices that share a drive. They can access it. We have one person who works at home and live 600km away. He can access everything on our drives. It is a life saver.

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    Master OptiBoarder rbaker's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by chip anderson View Post
    Suspect keeping it as a picture would take so much hard drive storage, it would be impractical.
    As of yesterday (02-10-2010) Best Buy was selling a 2.0 terabyte SATA hard drive for $139.00. A typical B&W document scaned at 300 dpi would yield a file size of about 100k. I leave it to you to divide 2T by 100K. Im sure that you will find that hard drives are far cheaper than filing cabinets.

  5. #5
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    and paper

    Don't forget about the cost of paper.

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    Quote Originally Posted by chip anderson View Post
    Suspect keeping it as a picture would take so much hard drive storage, it would be impractical.
    Not really. JPEG and PDF are reasonably small, and today we have 2 and 3 terrabyte disks...which turn out to be cheaper than buying records, folders, and cabinets.

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    What about file archiving or document management software? How are you filing all the documents related to a particular patient? Are you just using the Windows filing system, or using something like PaperPort?

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    Our office uses Windows. We are supposed to move to Sharepoint.

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    Our lab uses Docuware http://www.docuware.us/ to archive paper orders.
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    I've seen lots of practitioners take this approach to document imaging- EMR's can be extremely expensive to implement and simple scanning can help you reclaim your file room space or get quick access to historical patient charts.

    In terms of an actual document scanner - I would recommend either Kodak or Fujitsu brans... they are pretty much the two leaders in the imaging industry.

    If you are just looking at scanning archived/closed charts, then something as simple as Adobe PDF's can work for you. However, if you are looking at scanning current charts, you will need a Document Management system. Basically, you can't continually add new pages to a PDF document after its been created so you need a live document future documentation. I would recemmend PaperVision Enterprise as a good and affordable solution that is under $2k for a single concurrent user that allows you to customize your index field and project setting. You can find more at http://www.centurydocumentimaging.com/papervision.asp if you like.

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    OCR to help

    Saving everything as images works, but it's hardly as effective as editing documents, searching for, etc won't be as effecient.

    Check out an OCR - Optical Character Reader. It scans the document and converts the letters into actual text. Obviosly it won't help with hand scripted text, but printed it usually works quite well.

    Here's several free ones online you can try: http://dailytechie.com/convert-image...ree-online-ocr

    And go go download.com to find a free on you can install on your system. Or search for best free OCR programs.

    BTW, for tech questions, you'd probably get better answers on tech and or business forums.
    Cheers!

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    OptiWizard OptiBoard Bronze Supporter pezfaerie's Avatar
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    Neat Receipts is awesome!
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    Hello!

    Can anyone suggest me how to convert an image into a document and scan the document as a patient report?

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