By Ann Grana, August 2008

Many physicians and office managers today are doing their homework and researching what type of EMR will be the perfect fit for their practice. Others belong to large groups who are having multi-year rollouts and know they will be initiating a system, but their “go live” date could be many months or years in the future.

In the July 3^rd issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, it was reported that only four percent of physicians are using a fully functional EMR, and 13% reported having a basic system. Clearly, many offices are preparing for the road ahead.

We often have offices ask, “What can I do today to prepare for this change tomorrow?” The short answer is-quite a bit!

TAB St. Louis has been working with medical offices for over fifty years to address the all-important (and often overlooked) issue of document management. Common concerns are:

1. What do I do with all of this paper?

2. How do I get this data into my EHR?

3. Can I address this even if our EMR vendor has not been chosen?

3. What do I need to keep by law?

4. How do I store my images and where?

5. How are they retrieved?

6. We purchased an EMR (“my doctor liked it at a trade show and bought it!”) and have no idea how to convert our documents. Help!!

7. We currently store our archived files. In the long run, is it less expensive to continue this or scan? What factors shall I consider?

8. How can I make the records I have stored more accessible and organized?

 There are a variety of ways to manage documents and we have the answers to all of the above!

One such way to prepare today (or make your office more efficient even if you will never go to an EHR) is a product called Medical Chart Manager. Our innovative new system prepares your charts for EMR and will dramatically improve retrieval time and eliminate lost files.

Medical Chart Manager is a secure online application guaranteed to save you time and money – today and in the future – by labeling, tracking and organizing charts for the conversion to electronic medical records.

Label
Quickly print color-coded labels and barcodes for charts.

Track
Easily locate charts as they move around your office or off-site

Organize

Efficiently inventory and index chart contents for a paper to electronic conversion.

TAB also provides a new service called “on demand scanning,” which allows you to scan files as you need them and turn your chart room in to a revenue-generating space.