Is your organization’s culture preventing more efficient processes? Many healthcare organizations have embraced the idea of digitizing records, yet despite ongoing new compliance and regulation mandates, and emerging technology for electronic health records, many have a culture that impedes process efficiency. Loma Linda University Health (LLUH) was one organization that realized it needed a culture change. Many of its departments preferred manual processes because it was comfortable for them. But when they experienced firsthand how much time and effort automating processes could save, they understood how that translated into better service for students and patients, and became champions for change. By David Lewis, VP of product marketing, Kofax
By David Lewis, VP of product marketing, Kofax
Is your organization’s culture preventing more efficient processes? Many healthcare organizations have embraced the idea of digitizing records, yet despite ongoing new compliance and regulation mandates, and emerging technology for electronic health records, many have a culture that impedes process efficiency. Loma Linda University Health (LLUH) was one organization that realized it needed a culture change. Many of its departments preferred manual processes because it was comfortable for them. But when they experienced firsthand how much time and effort automating processes could save, they understood how that translated into better service for students and patients, and became champions for change.
As both a university and a major medical center, LLUH is a large and complex organization. And like other rapidly growing and successful enterprises, LLUH faced a classic technology problem: how to replace a variety of software products and manual processes with efficient, automated processes built on a scalable, robust enterprise solution.
Being in both the healthcare and higher education industries, it is both paper intensive and very manual-process intensive. For many of its transactional processes, such as accounts payable and student records, LLUH perceived that implementing an enterprise-wide capture-driven system could potentially save the organization millions of dollars annually and significantly improve productivity.
Like many large enterprises, LLUH had a number of isolated document capture solutions, which were basic, traditional scanning products used in some of the high-volume areas. In fact, many of the high-volume transactional areas weren’t using any kind of capture solution. Instead, data was entered into the system by manually keying from hardcopy forms. Does this sound familiar to your organization?
Although an enterprise-level document capture solution would provide departments and business units with a more efficient approach to capture, search and business intelligence, Brian Harris, executive director of Web Operations at LLUH, knew that introducing a significant change like this would involve more than just rolling out the new technology. His admits that his challenge was shifting the culture. As individual departments were accustomed to their own solutions, employees felt comfortable with these familiar, manual processes, even knowing they weren’t very efficient.
Moreover, organizational structure – with education on one side and healthcare on the other – only complicated matters at LLUH. While some capture requirements are certainly similar across departments, most handle very different types of information. For example, on the healthcare side, LLUH processes some 23 million images per year for medical records, and up to 80 percent of the processes involved in capturing and managing these images were done manually. On the university side, student records, admission applications and administrative records were key areas that would benefit from capture-driven transactional processes.
To validate the need for automated capture, Loma Linda University Health contracted a detailed analysis of its capture processes. Initial projections suggested cost savings up to $4 million per year from implementing accounts payable automations, and $250K in annual productivity gains from utilizing electronic invoices.
Loma Linda University Health now uses smart process applications, which include automated capture software, in its risk management, human resources, general counsel and accounts payable departments. LLUH also implemented an automation of the student records department.
Among the first departments enhanced with smart process applications were purchasing and accounts payable. Jeremy Hubbard, director of Business Innovation at Loma Linda University Health recollects that before capture automation was implemented, someone would manually enter invoice information into the system. Now their purchasing and AP processes are almost 100 percent automated.
Not only did the capture process make AP processes much faster and more efficient, it also made the scanned information immediately available for search and analysis. Previously, invoices were scanned and entered into the system in batches, perhaps once a week. Now invoices are scanned upon receipt. This gives the financial teams more traction around spending, with the ability to perform real-time analysis on that data and respond to changes with greater immediacy.
LLUH initially scanned 2.5 million documents per year. The organization now scans and processes thousands of documents daily. Smart process applications have transformed the way key business units do business.
Looking forward, LLUH has big plans for incorporating mobile capture capabilities to let employees use their smartphones or tablets to snap a photograph to initiate business processes at the earliest point in the process. Having the ability to use mobile devices will provide tremendous convenience for medical personnel, faculty, patients and students. Having gone through an automation culture shift, the mobile shift is an intuitive next step that will likely be more easily embraced. Is your organization ready to embrace mobile?
About the author
David Lewis is the Vice President of Product Marketing at Kofax, a leading provider of smart process applications for the critical First Mile of customer interactions. Connect with David on Twitter @Delewis59 and @Kofax.
