New Platform Cures LabOne's Scanning Woes

LabOne is a centralized laboratory in the Kansas City area that provides testing and information services to companies nationwide. Its services include risk assessment information; healthcare services to employers, HMOs, and physicians; and drug-testing services.

Every case LabOne handles has volumes of paperwork associated with it. The laboratory had a scanning system in place to record these documents, but realized some weaknesses inherent to this system. "We used 20-30 midrange scanners running all day long," says Mike Asselta, LabOne executive vice president and COO. "Each scanner required a staff member to prepare the documents for scanning and manually scan them."

Because its business is so time sensitive, LabOne decided that it needed a larger platform that could scan faster, allowed for high throughput, and could read bar codes. After surveying the market, LabOne selected the ImageTrac scanner by Imaging Business Machines (IBML) (Birmingham, AL). The documents LabOne processes aren't standard in size. The ImageTrac handles a variety of document sizes at a high volume. Plus, its open transport architecture makes clearing any jams easy. "The ImageTrac cut down on the time our employees had to spend preparing a document for imaging, drastically reducing our labor costs," notes Asselta.

LabOne purchased its first ImageTrac in summer 2002, and the results have been beneficial for the laboratory. "We had a minimum return hurdle for this project of 17%, which was a 2 1/2 year payback. The actual return turned out to be 30%. There was so much cash flow thrown off from the labor cost reduction that we purchased a second ImageTrac later that year. Even after adding the second scanner, the return remains in the 25% to 30% range."

The ImageTrac platform is designed to handle the high throughput scanning demands of LabOne. On an average day the ImageTracs at LabOne process 50,000 to 60,000 documents, or approximately a quarter million documents per week.