Backfile Conversion Service Yields EHR Add-On Sales
After imaging a medical office’s 3,000 patient records, a systems integrator earns EHR (electronic healthcare records) add-on sales and more than $800,000 in referral business.
When systems integrator DISC became a certified Allscripts reseller in August 2003, it had no idea how valuable one of the handoff accounts it received would be worth. One in particular came from Goal Oriented Healthcare, a two-physician internal medicine practice located in St. Louis. Goal Oriented Healthcare had previously purchased Allscripts TouchChart EHR to run its office more efficiently. Its original plan was to convert patient records to digital images between the time a patient called to schedule an appointment and the date of the appointment. After six months, the small medical practice was only 10% into its backfile conversion, and it had created another problem in the process. “It was trying to maintain the electronic records in addition to its paper records,” says KC Frank, VP of DISC. “The practice was very excited when we told it we could take care of its backfile conversion and complete the migration to the EHR system.” Within two days, DISC completed the scanning of the remaining 3,000 patient records and brought Goal Oriented Healthcare the results on several CDs.
According to Frank, it is typical to find small businesses that don’t understand all that is required to complete a scanning project — either because they overestimate the capabilities of their internal resources or their document management vendors don’t bother to let them know all that is entailed. “When we perform backfile conversion services, we dedicate 10 to 20 people to the task, and we use high-end scanners and several desks/tables to stage the work,” says Frank. “For example, staples and paper clips have to be removed, and documents need to be sorted according to type.”
One EHR Customer Helps Bring In
$800,000-Plus In Referral Business
Since completing its initial scanning project for Goal Oriented Healthcare, DISC was able to help the client implement two add-on modules to its EHR solution — TouchChart Rx+ e-prescription and TouchChart Note. The e-prescription module compares all the medications a patient is prescribed to a pharmacy database that alerts physicians to problems associated when two or more drugs are taken at the same time. The TouchChart Note module is used by physicians to capture each aspect of a patient’s visit electronically, ranging from vital statistics to the patient’s prognosis.
DISC is currently working with Goal Oriented Healthcare to add the TouchChart OCR (optical character recognition) module to its EHR solution, which would enable full text searching on all of the practice’s scanned documents. It’s also working with the healthcare practice to integrate Welch Allyn diagnostics equipment with the EHR solution to enable a one-step data capture process. DISC has grown close to its customer within the past year and a half. According to Frank, Goal Oriented Healthcare even invites the systems integrator to office functions and has spoken at trade shows about how much it has benefited from its EHR solution and DISC’s expertise. “Our relationship with Goal Oriented Healthcare has led to more than $800,000 in new EHR business to date,” says Frank. “And, we expect that number to grow to well over $1 million by the end of 2006.”