Customer Success: Newport Hospital & Health Services

Newport Hospital Makes Strides Toward a Paperless Work Environment

Profile

Established in 1921 as Public Hospital District 1, Newport Hospital and Health Services (NHHS) is a rural hospital in Newport, Washington, that provides essential services to residents and visitors of Pend Oreille County and the surrounding area. The hospital district employs approximately 300 people and offers a wide variety of services, from emergent and acute care to assisted living.

According to the NHHS, dealing with mounds of paper is part of the daily routine in a rural hospital. Several elements made management of paper a difficult task.

• Paperwork from outpatient service orders, medical reports, purchase orders, invoices, insurance paperwork, contracts, correspondence, and other administrative documents must be reviewed, filed, and retained every day.
• Retention schedules require that many items be kept for extended periods of time, sometimes indefinitely, and storage space is very limited.
• Requests for information often meant digging through boxes of papers for one item.

Requirements

"Trying to manage all of the paper was becoming a crushing weight on laboratory employees. We knew we had to find a solution," said Christina Wagar, NHHS Laboratory Manager. She was introduced to document management at a vendor show. Convinced that this was the answer to the problem, she began to look at different document management companies. "We were looking for a solution that would operate in conjunction with MEDITECH, our hospital's patient and billing information system, offer 'pick and choose' options for affordability, and provide customization solutions for the needs of other departments throughout the district."

Solution

NHHS elected PaperWise as their solution provider, and implemented their solution in July 2008, starting with three departments: Laboratory, Patient Financial Services, and Accounting.

INTEGRATION

The integration between PaperWise and MEDITECH has given NHHS the ability to easily coordinate information, which is necessary for maximum efficiency and return on investment.

With a couple of keystrokes PaperWise instantly retrieves and indexes information from MEDITECH, which eliminates manual indexing errors, time spent searching for documents, and time spent maintaining paper files.

"The fact that PaperWise is able to pull information from MEDITECH is a huge benefit for us. This ability really gives us a comprehensive system," shared Leslie Wiese, coordinator for the NHHS PaperWise Team.

ELECTRONIC FILING

"A great deal of our patient and billing information is managed in MEDITECH; however, some is not. Much of the information outside of MEDITECH is on paper, which creates a cumbersome system for processing and/or retrieving information," explained Wiese. "PaperWise provides an avenue to complete our electronic health information loop. Information stored in PaperWise is accessible within seconds, and accessibility is not affected by physical location of the document and/or the person doing the search."

Electronic filing opens the door for documents such as consent forms, insurance information, and physician orders to be shared simultaneously across departments, while maintaining the level of security required by HIPAA.

Progress

NHHS has added projects incrementally since their initial deployment and currently has PaperWise functioning at varying levels in at least six additional departments. One of the initial implementation projects, Accounts Payable, was recently improved and expanded to include scanning documents at the Materials Management/Purchasing level and matching them at the Accounts Payable level. There will also be a routing and approval process for managers and directors through a web‐based solution tied directly to PaperWise.

Future

"There have been many instances that PaperWise has been tailored to meet our specific needs," Wiese said. "It is one of the many things we appreciate about PaperWise and the people who make it work!"

Today, things are going well for the hospital, whose project list is quickly growing. "We look forward to expanding throughout our District. [PaperWise] will definitely help us reach our goal regarding electronic medical records as well as help us define new processes as we take steps toward a paperless business model," said Wiese.