CASE STUDIES
Alpine Ear, Nose & Throat
Company Overview
Alpine Ear, Nose & Throat Is a Medical Group Practice located in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Alpine is a premier provider of comprehensive pediatric and adult ear, nose and throat care. Their ENT specialists alleviate medical conditions through advanced medical, diagnostic, and surgical treatment.
Business Problem
HealthCare remains a paper-intensive and minimally automated and digitized industry. It is currently estimated that 90% of all patient information remains on paper. As such, there are numerous inherent problems associated with paper-based patient records. Paper based files can be lost, misfiled or accidently destroyed. According to studies by The New England Journal of Medicine, it is estimated that approximately 1/3 of every dollar spent on healthcare, is spent on administrative costs. This is often the case on how effective and efficiently the medical community can manage their paper medical files. Alpine was one of those companies that fit into this category and were looking for a better alternate solution.
Solution
In April, 2008, Alpine Ear Nose & Throat made the decision to engage the services of Image Doc USA to digitally image their paper medical files into electronic format. With the help of ImageDoc, Alpine was able to make the seamless conversion into the electronic medical records world. The result for Alpine was a more cost efficient way of managing patient charts and information. Accessing patient charts became much faster and enabled physicians the ability to access all patient information online, leading to ultimately improved healthcare. Document distribution between medical offices, hospitals, and insurance carriers, became a simple task electronically. This eliminated the time and resources often required to fax documents for referrals, second opinions, as well as insurance needs.
As a result of this transformation, Alpine Ear Nose & Throat was able to dramatically cut costs associated with photocopy, faxing, or using courier services to transport patient information. They have also repurposed their old file rooms to facilitate additional physicians as well as more examination rooms. The significant decrease in record administration has enabled their physicians the opportunity to see more patients, thus increasing overall business.
"As a result of this transformation, Alpine Ear Nose & Throat was able to dramatically cut costs associated with photocopy, faxing, or using courier services to transport patient information."