Medical Records on the Move

Today, Jun 2005

Document Conversion Speeds Access

Oklahoma's largest hospital, OU Medical Center, provides care to individuals and families in Oklahoma City and the surrounding areas. It has the distinct advantage of having both academic and private physicians on staff, thereby providing Oklahoma's citizens with a commitment to patient care and the skill to train future generations of physicians. OU Medical Center's doctors and faculty are members at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

OU Medical Center consists of four facilities: The Children's Hospital, Everett Tower, Presbyterian Tower and Presbyterian Professional Building Clinic. All facilities became part of HCA (Hospital Corporation of America) in 1997, and the entire campus merged under the new ownership. Together, the facilities have 886 beds.

Record Management Challenge

Like all hospitals, OU Medical Center maintains extensive files on all patients that are treated in its four facilities. Patient files consist of such documentation as doctors' progress notes and orders, nurses' notes, medication sheets, physical history documents, lab reports, x-rays, operation reports, etc. The average single file contains 100 to 150 pages or more.

While much of the patient information has become computergenerated over the years, some of the documents in the patient file - including doctors' progress notes and orders - are still handwritten. Hard-copy patient files remain on the shelf for two years and are filed using a terminal digit filing system. Previously, all patient files were captured on microfilm for future reference, and old hard-copy files were kept in file rooms and in boxes.

It often takes 10 to 15 minutes to look for a specific record on microfilm. Because OU Medical Center is a teaching facility, and because the physicians and nurses needed to increase office efficiencies, they required easier access to patient records and research.

OU Medical Center required a solution that would enable them to quickly access their patient files electronically. They needed to have the ability to search for information based on a variety of search criteria. And the solution would have to be able to capture and index handwritten documents and notes.

Solution

OU Medical Center turned to a local provider of document and content management hardware, software and services -for a solution. Business Imaging Systems' (BIS) document conversion service bureau has been scanning OU Medical Center's patient records since May 2004. Tens of thousands of images at a time are transferred temporarily onto USB 2.0 hard drives; the images are then loaded into EMC Documentum ApplicationXtender onsite at OU Medical Center.

In 2004, the service bureau scanned nearly 15 million documents for OU Medical Center. On average, converting 200 to 300 boxes of patient files to images every week. BIS will continue to image patient files until the entire hospital is fully computerized. Valerie Bell, manager of the Medical Center's Presbyterian Tower's health information management department, estimates that this will take at least five years.

The images of patient records dating back to 2002 are stored in EMC Documentum ApplicationXtender. They are available for retrieval by OU Medical Center staff through BIS MasterScan. Staff members click on a desktop icon for MasterScan to launch the search dialogue. Files can be found through a variety of search criteria, including patient name, medical record number, account number, and birthday. It now takes less than one minute to find the needed information.

Any imaged document can be retrieved, viewed and printed through the application by any staff member with access to the patient files. Due to HIPAA regulations, electronic patient records are secured, and access to the files is closely monitored within the hospital.

In addition to providing services through their document conversion service bureau, BIS is also providing onsite hardware maintenance and support services for OU Medical Center's existing microfilm equipment. Although the hospital no longer puts new documents on microfilm, they use Minolta microfilm readers to view documents dated prior to 2002 that already exist on microfilm.