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“HITS Scanning Solutions afforded us a MAJOR COST REDUCTION and process efficiencies within HIM and the entire BJH is reaping the benefits.”
Pat Mueth, RN
Director, HIM Department
Barnes-Jewish Hospital at Washington University Medical Center is the largest hospital in Missouri and the largest private employer in the St. Louis region. We have 13 hospitals and nearly 26,000 employees. An affiliated teaching hospital of Washington University School of Medicine, Barnes-Jewish Hospital has a 1,700 member medical staff and a ranking of the number 6th hospital in America by the US news and World Report.
When I began my role as Director of Health Information Management at BJH in 2000, my greatest challenges were space and access of patient information. The volumes emphasize the critical need BJH had for an online storage solution for all patient records. I put together a proposal that addressed the numerous challenges in HIM: increasing litigation and compliance review requirements; increasing chart pull requests for research; the need to access the same patient records by multiple caregivers simultaneously; poor quality of Microfilm copies; relying on HIM to access and pull all records for review from a centralized location; the inability to provide remote access due to the many components of the chart still in the manual chart.
We began to explore options and quickly determined scanning was the BJH solution to complement the complete online patient record.
By 2001, we were scanning BJH records using HITS Scanning Solutions. We could not have done it without them! Within days of signing the contract, our charts were being scanned and uploaded to the network for all authorized staff to view. The HITS Scanning Solutions Staff became an integral part of our HIM team. The HIM environment became a much quieter and more professional atmosphere since the scanning process became an integral part of the record flow process. Very quickly, the clinicians took advantage of the numerous benefits afforded by the online scanned records:
- Remote access was now a reality as coders began working from home.
- Storage issues disappeared; shelving units were replaced with cubicles with PC's for the staff.
- Quality of the chart improved from microfilm copies to scanned images.
- Physician and nursing staff access the scanned records themselves from the PC's at the nursing units or physician offices without relying on the HIM staff.
- The record request process was reduced from 6 steps to one simple step. All records are accessible via the BJH network for all authorized clinicians to view.
HITS Scanning Solutions afforded us a major cost reduction and process efficiencies with HIM and the entire BJH is reaping its benefits.
Outsourcing this critical process within HIM to a company committed to quality and excellence in customer service is why BJH is now one of the few hospitals meeting the challenges of an online medical record. HITS Scanning Solutions staff work side by side with the HIM Staff in the same office location. Over the past 4 years, a combination of support provided by HITS Scanning Solutions include onsite scanning of all medical records and lab requisitions, removal of all offsite storage of records, and consultation with IT staff to link our scanned images to the online network of information at BJH. HITS Scanning Solutions is an integral part of our HIM family at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
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Success Stories 
