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 BRIDGING THE GAP:
PAPER MEDICAL RECORDS TO
A CLINICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM
“From inception, our partnership with HITS
Scanning Solutions was exceptional! Their
technical expertise, creativity, customer
service, and on-site representatives were
excellent.”
Noreen Duncan
Director, Patient Financial Services
Decatur Memorial Hospital (DMH) is a 339 bed, acute care facility located in central Illinois. The hospital serves a community of approximately 100,000 people.
In 2003, DMH started an initiative to move toward the computerized patient record. McKesson's Horizon Patient folder was the software selected. DMH recognized that in addition to a successful training and implementation plan, the system would need to meet user information needs in order to realize the maximum benefits of a clinical information system to create the Electronic Medical Record. DMH had seven years of paper records stored in the HIM department. To achieve our goal of having patient information available in an electronic format to better serve the needs of our patients, we decided to convert the paper to digitized images and import the images into Horizon Patient Folder. After meeting with digital conversion vendors, we initiated an in-house scanning project. Within a few months, we recognized the cost and production efficiencies of outsourcing the scanning project. DMH selected HITS Scanning Solutions to be our scanning vendor. HITS Scanning Solutions worked directly with our Information Systems Department and McKesson to ensure that the images could be imported into Horizon Patient Folder.
A year later, more than 12 million images were successfully loaded into our clinical information system. Our clinicians now have timely on-line access to current as well as historical patient information. This had a direct correlation to substantial efficiencies gained in our transition to the Electronic Medical Record, which afforded us a reduction in staff through attrition of 13 FTEs.
From inception, our partnership with HITS Scanning Solutions was exceptional! Their technical expertise, creativity, customer service, and on-site representatives were excellent. Pam Mueller, as well as all the administrative personnel, was attentive, insightful, experienced and always responsive to a challenge we encountered.
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Success Stories 
