Back-file Medical Record Scanning: In-House vs. Outsourcing

Healthcare organizations are often slow to digitize medical records, due to the belief that scanning medical records and documents is too large an investment to justify or too much of a risk. However, medical document scanning offers significant cost savings, improved security, and enhanced patient care.

In this article you will learn how:

The growing volume of hardcopy medical records never ends and always has risks like damage, misfiling, and storage inefficiencies.
Transitioning to digital records can reduce costs, improve security, and optimize space.
Healthcare organizations can digitize records in-house or outsource to professionals.
Outsourcing document scanning offers benefits like best practices in scanning, higher security, and better compliance.
Outsourcing minimizes risks associated with errors, privacy breaches, and equipment investment.

The volume of medical records that healthcare organizations process has increased tenfold in the last five years. When you consider the amount of resources required to manage paper medical records, not only do the records take up valuable space that could be better used for clinical purposes, but they also present a number of Data Protection and Compliance challenges.

Just consider the costs and risks:

The increasing volume of paper drives the cost of paper handling higher with the ongoing investment in storage space and necessities like cabinets.
Paper medical records can easily be damaged by fire, flooding, or simply human error.
The movement of the paper medical records is usually uncontrolled and easily misplaced or misfiled.
An on-site storage solution is a poor use of real estate. Many of these areas are not fit for the purpose and are not secure or temperature controlled. Transitioning space previously used for file storage into patient care areas can also drive additional revenue, quickly mitigating any backfile digitization costs.
Storage and processing of paper-based documents require a dedicated workforce.

What are the options for digitizing your medical records?

There are two ways that healthcare organizations can choose to digitize their medical records. You can decide to do it in-house, or you can choose to outsource it to a professional document scanning and management company.

In-house medical records scanning

While in-house would seem like the quickest route to digitization, to do this properly you will need quality scanners, dedicated staff, project managers, technical training, space for workstations, quality assurance procedures, servers, and printers, plus specialized software to make it all work.

Do you have the right scanning equipment? Standard office-based scanners will not be able to cope with a high volume of records. You will need to invest in scanners that are fit for purpose, bearing in mind that they will become obsolete over time.
Do you have the resources? Even if you do have the right type of scanner do you have enough resources in-house to be able to undertake the work and meet the deadlines expected? You will need to factor in start-up training as well as ongoing training as new systems or new staff members are added.
What are your indexing requirements? Digitizing documents doesn’t just mean scanning them, you need to consider how you plan to search and retrieve records going forward and this might require a degree of manual indexing, depending on how complicated your indexing procedure needs to be, this could slow the process down.
What are the deadlines for documents to be scanned? If documents need to be digitized in time for an upcoming clinic appointment, or your organization just wants a fast turnaround, you might not be able to meet your deadline if your in-house capacity is limited. Experience shows us that healthcare organizations are regularly unable to keep up with the demand of ‘day-forward scanning’ and often fall behind, which means the digital medical records are not available when they are needed.

Too often the task of scanning records is often given to juniors, interns, or temps, which can increase the risk of errors and may result in anything from lawsuits, and privacy breaches.

Outsourced medical records scanning

Your other option is to outsource medical records scanning to professionals who have the knowledge, experience and skills to undertake these large-scale projects. Outsourcing is faster and more affordable than trying to do it in-house. It is important to select an outsourcing company who understands the healthcare sector and all the compliance and regulatory requirements that really matter.

“Outsourcing” may sound like a risk, in that you will be handing over important and private medical records to digitize, however, your organization will gain some value and benefits:

You will get best practice for medical records scanning: Your documents will be scanned by skilled professionals with proven processes in place that are designed to maximize image quality and data accuracy. Document preparation requires experienced personnel to ensure documents are processed by people who understand the documents they are handling.
Using a supplier who has access to top-of-the-range equipment: Meaning they will be capable of scanning various types of documents using high speed, flatbed, and large format scanners.
Reduced costs compared to scanning documents in-house: When you take into account all the costs associated with scanning in-house, including staff costs, maintenance of scanning machinery, slower processing times, manual indexing, and software investment you will soon see that outsourcing is a more cost-effective option.
Increased security for both your physical and digital records: Select a supplier who will collect your medical records directly and securely from your premises. Choose a supplier who will also provide the tools to allow you to track your information at all times.
True representation of the original documents: Medical records scanned accurately under controlled processes will ensure that no information is missed, and strict quality control checks are followed. This will further ensure that all your regulatory and compliance requirements about privacy, data protection and security are met.
Easier to plan and budget – your organization will be paying a set cost per image which makes it easier to forecast the costs of a project and ongoing scanning.

When you consider the risk of errors and privacy breaches, it’s no wonder that most healthcare organizations are increasingly making the informed decision to outsource their scanning needs to third parties.

Conclusion

Scanning medical records can feel like an overwhelming undertaking and it should not be underestimated, but document scanning can help you deal with the rapidly increasing burden of maintaining a paper archive.

By outsourcing you are handing over a huge administrative task to professionals, saving capital investment and staffing costs. Choosing a scanning partner with state-of-the-art production equipment and software, managed by well trained and experienced staff, will give you greater consistency, less stress, and a more cost-effective option for document digitization than most in-house operations are capable of.