DocLanding: Where It's At

Office Converts 1,500 Square Feet of Storage Space into Work Space With DocLanding

Company: The central billing office (CBO) of a major academic-based healthcare provider supporting approximately 300 physicians.

Challenge: Meet CBO's requirements, including HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance, integration with current software, minimal impact on IT, secure browser-based document access, role-based user management, and affordability with minimal up-front investment.

Results: The DocLanding scanning software and online document repository met all requirements and more and saved an estimated $90,000 in initial deployment costs for hardware, software, and labor over comparable solutions.

Impact: Within the first six months of deploying the DocLanding solution, the CBO converted 1,500 square feet of storage space into functional work space for use by the organization's growing workforce. Billing specialists were able to handle higher volumes of patient inquiries, leading to increased physician reimbursements and improved customer satisfaction.  The CBO estimated that it cut the amount of time to perform research on unpaid claims, audits, credit balances, and other reimbursement issues.

The Central Billing Office (CBO) of Creighton Medical Associates, a major academic-based healthcare provider, found that using DocLanding not only helped them convert significant storage space to work space, but also increased physician reimbursements and patient satisfaction.

The CBO manages insurance claims submission and collection for 10 metro area and 19 non-metro area practices, supporting approximately 300 physicians. The more than 60,000 claims the practices produce and submit to insurance carriers each month result in the CBO handling more than 70,000 Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) statements from carriers to disposition the submitted claims. Before switching to DocLanding, the provider's hard copy filing system occupied over 1,500 square feet and required four staff members to manage the documents. 

Handling this volume of paper resulted in the inevitable loss or misplacement of EOBs and supporting documentation.  Lost paperwork meant disgruntled patients with claims not handled in a timely manner and loss of revenue from physician reimbursements delayed or not paid.  Significant staff time was spent moving boxes of documents and trying to locate documents.

The provider was interested in moving to an electronic document management solution, but any solution needed to meet a number of requirements. DOCCENTER's DocLanding solution met all these requirements and more. DOCCENTER deployed its DocLanding scanning software to scan and index documents and document repository to search and store content. 

Requirements:

•1)    HIPAA compliant - DocLanding is HIPAA complaint

•2)    Scanning software integrated with the CBO's practice management software to automate document indexing - The DocLanding scanning software was configured to import a data file from the CBO's core billing and collection system. The data file contained index values to associate with the scanned EOBs and supporting documents. This eliminated the need for data entry of date, name, and account fields, along with information related to ten other index values. The technicians simply checked a box to associate the index values with the appropriate image. After index values were assigned to all images, the images were uploaded to the document repository.

•3)    Third-party hosting of the document repository due to IT resource limitations - The DocLanding repository provides the CBO with a centralized and secure Web-based solution. No IT resources were used to deploy the repository. The CBO required only a two-hour training session. 

•4)    Browser-based access to the document repository to avoid software deployments to user desktops yet allow secure access from any affiliated physician sites - A Web URL was distributed to the users via email. 

•5)    Role-based scanning and repository for the assignment of user rights to add, edit, and view content - The DocLanding scanning software and repository both use role-based user management systems.

•6)    Affordable and minimal upfront investment cost - The CBO minimized upfront costs for hardware and software since DocLanding is a subscription-based service. DOCCENTER's initial setup fees were $3,000 and the initial monthly invoice was $63. It is estimated that the CBO saved $90,000 in initial deployment costs for hardware, software, and labor. 

Besides meeting these initial objectives, DocLanding offers disaster protection and other document management features, such as check-out and check-in functionality, document versioning, keyword searches, and document sharing.

Within the first six months of deploying the DocLanding solution, the CBO converted 1,500 square feet of storage space into functional work space for use by the organization's growing workforce. Billing specialists were able to handle higher volumes of patient inquiries, leading to increased physician reimbursements and improved customer satisfaction. The CBO estimated that it cut the amount of time to perform research on unpaid claims, Medicare audits, patient credit balances, and other reimbursement issues. 

"DOCCENTER has been a great partner due to their flexibility, service, and innovation. Their hosted solution offered an affordable imaging system that eliminated the customary maintenance and support costs of an in-house ECM application. Great product, great partner."

•-      Tom Haley
Director of IT