Home Healthcare Provider Discovers Cure For Document Management Headaches

Lifetime Care eliminates costly errors, improves access to patient information with scanners and software from Kodak Alaris

Organizations that provide in-home healthcare services are used to dealing with mountains of paperwork, and Lifetime Care, based in upstate New York, is no exception. An elite home healthcare and hospice provider, Lifetime Care delivers complete care and support services to individuals and families, boasting patient outcomes ranking in the 98^th percentile of New York agencies. The company treats an average of 3,000 patients per day, and must record and track every patient visit with speed and accuracy.

Initially, the agency outsourced its document scanning—a process that was time-consuming, costly and error-prone. To address these shortcomings, Lifetime Care purchased a variety of Kodak Alaris solutions, including the KODAK i3000 (www.kodakalaris.com/go/i3000news) and i4000 (www.kodakalaris.com/go/i4000news) Series Scanners, to bring document capture in-house, a decision that reduced costs and significantly improved image quality. However, the process required a staff of five people dedicated to manually indexing documents and filling in various fields for each patient visit. Plus, managing multiple software licenses and hardware dongles was demanding and complex.

With the assistance of Information Management Services (IMS), an Authorized Reseller of document scanners from Kodak Alaris, Lifetime Care introduced barcodes to patient visit documents. These preprinted labels eliminate the need to manually complete required information, such as patient name and ID number. When documents are returned to the home office, operators simply scan them and the required index fields are automatically populated, significantly increasing efficiency to the point where virtually no manual data entry is needed.

Over the past few years, IMS has further upgraded Lifetime Care’s fleet of scanners from Kodak Alaris by adding KODAK Capture Pro Software Network Edition (www.kodakalaris.com/go/capturepronews), a move that has dramatically increased business efficiency.

“With the Network Edition, Lifetime Care staff no longer have to worry about misplacing individual hardware dongles for each scanner or keeping track of multiple software renewals,” explained Mike Iadarola, Manager of IMS. “They now have licenses tracked from an individual location with one annual software renewal so maintenance and the entire process are streamlined.”

By greatly reducing the amount of manual indexing associated with patient visit documents, the capture software solution from IMS has allowed Lifetime Care to reduce costs.

“Now we’re able to optimize how we allocate our people’s time,” said John Cauvel, Vice President for MIS and Infrastructure at Lifetime Care. “IMS has helped us to not only greatly enhance the indexing process, but cut the error rate, and that has translated to better patient care.”

Lifetime Care’s physician order processing is done centrally and, now with Kodak Alaris’ hardware and software, documents can be scanned into the agency’s File360 database from any of five satellite offices. “If a supervisor in Rochester needs access to patient information in Newark or Auburn, they’re able to pull it up with ease on their desktop and search for any information field,” explained Cauvel.

“Given the regulations that we have to live with, paper is going to be around for a while,” Cauvel added. “What the Kodak Alaris products and File360 have allowed us to do is manage those documents for a minimal cost, while making sure we achieve compliance. The system is able to point out where we are missing information, and it allows us to act on key data without wading through mountains of paper.”

About Kodak Alaris’ Document Imaging Division
Kodak Alaris’ Document Imaging solutions enable customers to capture and consolidate data from digital and paper sources, understand and extract valuable insight from the contents, and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. Our offerings include award-winning scanners, capture and information management software, an expanding range of professional services and industry-leading service and support. With customers ranging from small offices to global operations, Kodak Alaris delivers superior systems and solutions to automate business processes, enhance customer interactions and enable better business decisions. For more information, visit kodakalaris.com/go/dinews.