Spectrum Health Leverages Paperless Solution to Achieve “One Patient, One Record” Goal

Spectrum Health Uses Kofax Transformation to Enable One Patient/One Record Methodology

ImageSoft Helps Healthcare Innovator Achieve Paperless Patient Legal Medical Record

Spectrum Health’s focus on providing best-in-class patient care while controlling costs required automating, streamlining and consolidating complex processes to better meet clinicians’ needs. Clinicians wanted simplified, electronic access to the complete patient legal medical record. With more than 60,000 inpatient discharges annually, a staff of 38in the health information management (HIM) document imaging division processed more than 12.5 million inpatient documents each year, including 2,400 unique clinical document types. Providing clinicians with accessibility to a patient’s complete medical record when all documents were paper-based presented the key challenge.

In addition to clinical records, Spectrum Health processed another 8 million documents annually in the back office spanning human resources, radiology, accounts payable, cash applications, finance and patient finance services (PFS). Pushing a high volume of paper was no longer an option for the growth-focused organization.

“Our Cerner EMR solution was very effective, but its capture capability had some limitations because it was barcode centric,” said Michael Putkovich, System Director of HIM at Spectrum Health. “HIM professionals know you never own or control all the documents that become a part of your health record. We wanted to quit building file rooms for the 35 percent of the health record that was still paper-based, and find a way to safely and efficiently get everything into our EMR.”

Putkovich chose document and process management specialists, ImageSoft, to help identify potential solutions that would close the gap in Spectrum’s pursuit of “one patient/one record.” Also headquartered in Michigan, ImageSoft had been named one of the Fastest-Growing Privately Held Companies in the U.S. by Inc. magazine, its growth driven by the company’s unyielding commitment to its customers’ success.

Spectrum Health’s goals were to:

• Automate and streamline medical records processing and classification.
• Define a standardized end-to-end process from scanning to QA.
• Meet the three-day service level agreement for clinicians (all records electronically available within 72 hours of discharge).
• Reduce labor costs for processing documents.
• Drive toward one patient/one record methodology.
• Reduce physical storage space.

“With more than 15 years experience providing technology solutions to the healthcare industry, we knew instantly that Kofax was best suited to meet Spectrum Health’s short- and long-term needs,” noted Christopher Angi, Healthcare Practice Manager, ImageSoft. “Kofax is the proven industry leader in capture-driven process solutions.”

ImageSoft recommended Kofax Capture™, Kofax Transformation™, and Kofax Monitor™. To ensure Spectrum Health understood the value of the Kofax solution, ImageSoft worked with the team to evaluate several other advanced capture solutions before the decision was finalized.

Kofax was selected unanimously for its:

Scalability

• Kofax Capture has the ability to handle millions of structured, semi-structured and unstructured forms across the enterprise, all while keeping pace with the company’s continued rapid growth.

Accuracy

• Clinical record accuracy is paramount at Spectrum Health and Kofax is highly regarded for its superior accuracy.

Full-Featured Capabilities

• Spectrum needed a solution that could capture, classify, separate and index more than 2,400 unique clinical document types with minimal human intervention.

ImageSoft used Kofax Transformation Content Classifier to create a unique waterfall classification system for Spectrum Health. The system looks for the patient form barcode first. If there is no barcode or it is obliterated, it then looks at the form number. If that is not available, it looks at the form title. If that cannot be identified, OCR technology is able to look at components of the form and determine if the document was a physician order, patient consent, progress note, or other document. “This was an extremely powerful capability,” Putkovich said. The new Kofax Transformation ability to process newly created clinical forms through the Kofax Transformation Learning Server was also considered a huge win by the Spectrum team.

Today, with the help of ImageSoft, Spectrum Health has achieved 100 percent of the goals initially set for this project. The health system continues to rollout the Kofax solution to its nine community hospitals and elsewhere within the enterprise.

“ImageSoft worked wonders for us,” said Putkovich. “They are not a vendor. They are truly a partner that has as much skin in the game as we do.”

Because of the mission-critical nature of clinical documents, Spectrum has built in an image-by-image inspection before any paper is destroyed. The documents are prepared, scanned, reviewed, QA’ed by three people and then released for consumption, all within 72 hours. This methodology gives Spectrum a high level of confidence in its electronic source of truth.

With its fully integrated, non-hybrid, paperless solution operating successfully, Spectrum Health is extremely pleased with its Kofax investment. The alternative of total manual document classification would have been to add 50 full-time employees, which made the capital expenditure in the software a “no brainer” according to Putkovich. “Kofax was instrumental in enabling our one patient/one record methodology,” he remarked. “As we continue to grow, Kofax will continue to be a mission-critical platform for us.”