A Case Study on Streamlining Medical Records through Digitization
A fter few years of operation a super speciality hospital experienced higher admission rates. The medical records department was struggling to cope with the scale-up and could not comply in time for audits. Medical records were kept at disparate locations, and often could not be retrieved in time. This was critical issue especially during accreditation and internal audits. The hospital needed a solution to address this problem. With increasing volume, prompt availability of patient files became a priority. The Hospital was moving toward an electronic medical record system. They approached ViDoc for the transition to a Digital Hospital.
Specifically our challenges included:
- Provide centralized, 24x7 quick retrieval
- Millions of pages of medical records to be digitized
- Remove overlap of already available electronic content
- Provide role based access to individual patient files during the scanning process
Emrix implemented the following process:
- Implemented the solution on cloud, to ensure fast go-live and higher storage visibility.
- Crystallized the long-term archival structure for the hospital’s medical records
- Simultaneous digitization of historical and ongoing patient files
- Understand the records that could be 1. electronically aggregated from existing systems, and 2. needed to be scanned
- Each digitized record was mapped to corresponding patient information in the HIS, using Unique Health ID and Visit ID as reference key
- Each scanned record was classified, additionally with the document type (e.g., progress notes, discharge summary, ICU notes etc)
- All digitized files to be passed through QC
- Adequate training provided to hospital staff
The Results:
- A new ecosystem to manage all content generated in the hospital was created.
- The Hospital met its medical record preservation requirements, and complied with audits in time.
- Saved valuable space in the medical records room. Also all patient records were now accessible from one central location.
- The system is now regularly used to retrieve medical records, and has become part of SOP.
