Paperless Office - Best Practices

Day-to-Day Users
1

mike-h30 wrote on Sunday, May 04, 2008:

I am in the process of establishing “best practices” in our office for going paperless and was wondering if others wouldn’t mind sharing what is working well for their office. 

1.) When a new patient comes into our office there are paper forms that we have them fill out and sign. My idea is to scan them to PDF and attach them to their chart. I was curious though if it is necessary to have the original hard copy stored, especially for legal purposes?  How do others handle the miscellaneous paper work?

2.) What process did others utilize with pre-OpenEMR patients?  Were all of the pre-OpenEMR charts scanned?

3.) After scanning pre-OpenEMR patient charts, can/should they be shredded? 

4.) To what degree are others paperless?

Thanks!

-Mike

2

bdwderm wrote on Monday, May 05, 2008:

Most scans are to a 500 GB NAS device. Patient registration and med history (1 page each) are scanned to the NAS; originals (for now) are retained in a paper file. Insurance IDs are scanned at check in and attached to the OEMR chart. Similarly, labs are scanned and attached to the chart. Originals are retained in a paper chart (filed in chronological order).

Hope this helps.

Brent