The Situation

Rockland Eye, a general ophthalmology practice in New York, has been administering cataract, Lasik and other eye care procedures since the 1960s. Rockland Eye operates out of two locations, Garnerville and Bardonia, with five ophthalmologists and twenty other staff members. Managing patient information between two locations was complicated.

Medical records were floating between two offices, getting passed around and not always being returned to their proper home. Whether they were left on desks or outside of the office, staff was spending two hours every day searching for the missing records. And on average, Rockland Eye misplaced an average of five patient records on a daily basis. They estimate an average of 2% of all documents were misplaced somehow. Misplaced records were often difficult or impossible to replace. A transition to Electronic Medical Records (EMR) was also imminent. Both the switch to EMR with the looming question of what to do with their paper medical records and frustration with lost or misplaced documents led Rockland Eye to the decision to implement Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Keith Froleiks, Practice Administrator, was tasked with selection and implementation of ECM. “When I see four people scrambling around for something, I want to pull my hair out,” Froleiks laughed.

The Solution

Rockland Eye sought an ECM solution that would not only simplify their records management process, but one that would also work alongside its EMR. Rockland Eye had purchased NextGen software to manage its electronic medical records, and Froleiks was concerned that the document management piece of the software was difficult to use. Froleiks also wanted to give work to a local document service provider to scan paper records into an electronic format and maintain access to the files in case they were needed during the conversion process. It was also important for Rockland Eye to sustain access to historic paper charts in an electronic format during ongoing use of their newly implemented EMR system. These goals led him to Digiscribe, who scanned all of the practice’s documents in three months, finishing just two weeks before the practice went live with EMR. Froleiks chose PaperVision Enterprise because the full-featured product was a better value than other options. Digiscribe performed the implementation, and Rockland Eye launched its EMR system and PaperVision Enterprise simultaneously in 2011.

With PaperVision Enterprise, Rockland Eye employees can put the focus back where it belongs, on patient care. Today, all paper charts are efficiently organized—once scanned into PaperVision Enterprise, the doctors simply have to enter the medical record number, hit a button and the chart loads immediately. Previously, staff members were spending two hours total each day looking for records. If they struggled to locate the record of choice, the doctor often stepped in and helped. “It slowed down the entire office,” Froleiks noted.

Now documents have a designated home and staff finds records instantly! Seven employees used to man the front desks and look for charts. Froleiks has since implemented a call center and his employees are spending more of their time helping patients and taking calls rather than digging through file cabinets, desks, vehicles, etc., for records. Froleiks is also thrilled with the reallocated space now that paper documents have been reduced. The Garnerville office turned a 7′ x 10′ space used for filing cabinets into an office for the practice administrator.