Advanced Urgent Care DocuLex Simplifies Urgent Medical Record Retrieval Advanced Urgent Care (AUC) offers medical treatment of illnesses and injuries on a walk-in basis along with occupational medicine for area employers. With a long tradition in the Phoenix metropolitan area, its five offices are conveniently located throughout the valley. Each office welcomes individuals of all ages who can't be seen by their primary care physicians, yet don't feel they require hospital emergency services. Advanced Urgent Care's experienced and established medical providers stand ready to serve anyone experiencing urgent, but not life-threatening problems. Advanced Urgent Care's patients come to them for the convenience and stay for the quality. Behind the scenes, there are many factors required to contribute to an overall "good patient experience". One of these factors is the proper maintenance of a patient's medical records. The Challenge Advanced Urgent Care is required to retain all adult patient records for 10 years. Pediatric records must be retained until the patient turns 18, plus another 3 years. Before regulations were issued to maintain patient records in an electronic format, all files were generated the old-fashioned way - on paper. As one can imagine, this meant thousands of documents across five AUC offices. To retrieve a document could mean traveling to different sites, and perhaps having a difficult time locating just the right record if it happened to have been misfiled, resulting in extra cost, time and hassle for AUC and its patients. Initially, AUC decided to hire an outside company to convert some of its stored files to an electronic format, however, when a situation arose where a document could still not be located based on an oversight from the outside provider in the conversion process, Renee Biskupski, Vice President of Operations for AUC decided to take matters into her own hands. Said Renee, "We stopped outsourcing and started storing. After a time, however, our storage was filling up, so we decided that we need a conversion and retrieval solution with our own controls to ensure nothing gets missed or lost." “...Picture a document storage facility in summertime Arizona… Can you imagine trying to locate a paper patient file in that?? This has been totally eliminated. ...” Renee Biskupski, VP of Operation - AUC The Solution Renee learned of the DocuLex Archive Studio Software Suite through a local office products dealer. She was looking for a complete solution to electronically archive and effectively retrieve AUC's patient records, and decided that Archive Studio Enterprise for unlimited users was a great fit for her document management needs. Renee employs an individual to scan older patient files, and uses the DocuLex Archive Studio Software Suite to automate the capture, management, archival and retrieval of the scanned documents. From a centralized location, the scanner operator uses the Goby capture component of Archive Studio to generate a cover sheet for each patient file to be scanned on AUC's Panasonic scanner. The Goby software automatically takes the scanned image file, OCRs it, indexes the documents per AUCs specifications and files these documents on a server as a fully searchable PDF, based on a pre-determined file structure customized by DocuLex support staff for AUC. This cover sheet includes selectable custom index meta data per Renee's specifications, such as name, birth date and social security number. After the scan process, AUC employs another component of Archive Studio called WebSearch. WebSearch is a secure, browser-based retrieval tool designed to search document-specific descriptions or a combination of keywords, and is permission-based across the organization to allow access to these scanned patient records for employees in all five AUC locations. AUC uses the WebSearch tool to fulfill patient record requests automatically. The Results "I have had the DocuLex solution in place for a number of years now," stated Renee. "With its many feautures and controls, it has enabled us to establish a HIPAA compliant records retention policy, which is a must. Between all five locations, I estimate we have successfully scanned over 800 file boxes of patient records from 2005 and 2006. This has freed up a huge amount of space and saved us money over the years. Most importantly, the DocuLex Archive Studio software has made our organization incredibly efficient! We aren't paying for a lot of file storage, and the WebSearch retrieval component is AWESOME! I can search for records in many different ways, and I have never been unable to locate a document easily that has been scanned with this system. Picture a document storage facility in summertime Arizona… Can you imagine trying to locate a paper patient file in that?? This has been totally eliminated. Now, generally patient record requests are fulfilled the same day from an air conditioned desk at any of our five locations with the DocuLex solution." "After working closely with DocuLex support staff, I have decided there are other aspects of the Archive Studio Software Suite that I would like to leverage for our corporate structure, not just the clinic medical records. Archive Studio has a workflow component that I would like to employ to streamline our internal business processes, including collaboration, content control and compliance automation. The great news is that DocuLex support will be there to work alongside me to customize my application and provide me ongoing education on the product capabilities through its webinar and training programs, AND I already own the product!" About DocuLex Incorporated in 1996, Florida-based DocuLex creates non-proprietary content management software. Through an extensive worldwide reseller channel, the company offers network-enabled document capture and image processing software, along with browser-based document and content management programs for collaboration, email archiving and compliance, knowledge management, customized workflow and records retention, offered as Archive Studio. Visit www.doculex.com for program information, access to your local dealer and demonstrations.