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Dr. Colin Ward pioneers paperless practice in a paper-filled world

When Dr. Colin Ward moved to Barrie, Ontario to open his first general surgery practice in 2009, he wanted to operate a paperless office from day one—even though there were very few paperless practices in the region. Thanks to his vision, Dr. Ward’s commitment to the paperless office makes him a leader in adopting the concept of electronic health records.

“The two other doctors I share office space with are not paperless, and they may eventually be forced to rent off-site storage space for thousands of files,” notes Dr. Ward. “Before I opened my practice, I recognized the problems of long-term storage of patient records— federal and provincial retention and accessibility laws require doctors to store nonactive patient records for seven years.”

Easy to use, used every day
Laura Mondolo is Dr. Ward’s Administrative Assistant. She manages his busy practice and shudders to imagine how she would file and store all the documents that come across her desk without the practices’ KODAK i1320 Scanner. (Note: previous model, now replaced by the KODAK i1320 Plus Scanner.)

“I use the KODAK i1320 Scanner every day. As soon as I get a piece of paper— whether it’s a new patient form, a referral from a family doctor, a followup or consultation letter, or test results—I scan it into our system and immediately put it into an electronic patient file,” says Mondolo.

Before Mondolo teamed up with Dr. Ward, she worked in offices that were not paperless. She says, “My whole life was in paper-filled offices. And now it’s so much easier. In a typical day, I might have multiple documents on my desk. Luckily, I also have the Kodak i1320 Scanner on my desk, it’s that small! I just put the papers onto the scanner and send the documents to the right file, automatically—with a mouse click. It takes only a few seconds.”

Here’s what makes the scanning process so easy: Mondolo can auto-feed any document — from the size of a driver’s license up to 863 mm (34 in.) long — at speeds up to 60 pages per minute. She can even scan both sides at the same time and output images in color, bitonal or grayscale.

Plus, the KODAK i1320 Scanner features Smart Touch functionality, which makes it easy for Mondolo to select the right scan settings and applications for the job. At the touch of a button, she has a quick shortcut to scan documents to patient files and storage, e-mail, printers, and other applications.

“I just put the paper into the KODAK i1320 Scanner and away we go. Thank goodness! The whole process is very time efficient.”

Eliminating filing increases efficiencyMondolo says the KODAK i1320 Scanner allows her to focus on her core responsibilities. “In my previous jobs, I threw papers into a folder and then once a week devoted hours to filing documents. First, I had to put them in alphabetical order. Then, find the right patient chart in the cabinet — often misfiled — before I could even slide the document into the folder, put the folder back in the box, put the box back in the cabinet, and eventually go back to my desk to get back to work.”

“The other day, I had a co-op student here, and there were 100 documents in front of me. I asked her to scan and file them, and she got through the pile in a few minutes. Can you imagine: paperwork for 100 different patients, all filed into the proper files, in the correct charts, in a little over half an hour? Unbelievable. It would have taken me several hours to do it with paper file folders,” claims Mondolo.

Along with the significant time savings, Mondolo believes the practice saves money on file folders, labels, and storage space rental. And having patient files in electronic format enables Dr. Ward to access and review critical information at the click of a button, from anywhere in the world via an Internet connection.

A customized document management systemDr. Ward worked with Salumatics Inc., one of the largest document conversion service companies in North America, to develop a custom system to convert his practice’s medical records into electronic images.

“Salumatics recommended the Kodak i1320 Scanner because of its superior image quality, functionality, small size, affordable price, and the fact that Laura would not need extensive training or technical support to operate it,” notes Dr. Ward.

To complete Dr. Ward’s document management system, Salumatics used its proprietary software, the SALUVISION Scan Interface Web-based scanning interface (developed using Captiva’s PixTools .NET SDK), along with its Webbased electronic document management system: SALUVISION.

The SALUVISION Scan Interface allows Mondolo to scan, index, and upload patient records, quickly and securely, over the Internet to the SALUVISION Web Portal. There, records immediately go into the proper patient’s electronic chart in Dr. Ward’s electronic filing system.

Simplified, streamlined, productiveAfter Mondolo scans a patient’s document, she opens the SALUMATICS SALUVISION Web Portal. There, she types in a patient’s last name. All patients with that last name pop up, and Mondolo clicks on the correct patient. Then a list of 15 document categories appears on screen, including referral data, consent forms, prescriptions, office dictation, and lab reports. Mondolo clicks the category where she wants to file the document, and she’s done filing the patient’s paperwork into the proper file, in the proper folder, in seconds, without ever leaving her desk.

“I just send the document into the system and my task of filing is completed.” she exclaims.

KODAK i1320 Plus Scanner (Current model, replacing the previous i1320 Scanner)