ECM supports healthcare
CNG-SAFE creates a folder for each patient and populates it with information drawn from a patient database. After the nurse fills in the LincDoc form with information based on services provided at the patient’s home, the form is updated and stored in the patient’s folder. “The document then goes into CNG Workflow for review by quality assurance, then to billing,” explains Graham. “Rather than taking weeks, the process is reduced to days, or sometimes minutes.”
Use of the system has expanded beyond the initial application. For example, when employees complete expense report forms, information is extracted from the employee’s file in CNG-SAFE and placed in the appropriate fields. The employee provides the expense information in the LincDoc form, and then the completed document is returned to CNG-SAFE.
Other uses emerge
The expansion into other uses is typical, according to Jim True, VP of Cabinet NG. “Frequently, a company will have an initial pain point and solve that problem,” he says, “and then other potential uses emerge. Or the customer will go to a conference and get ideas from other users and then start exploring what else can be done in their environment.”
Cabinet NG’s product offerings are focused on small to midsize companies. “We prioritize the features so the product can be used at many levels,” True says. “Customers don’t have to understand all the functionality to get started.” The Cabinet NG suite includes CNG-SAFE for shared access to documents and CNG Online, the SaaS version of the same product; Retriever and Sychnronizer for integration and synchronization with other applications; and modules that provide forms development, tight integration with Outlook and high-volume document capture.
Image archiving on demand
Although privacy concerns have impeded the adoption of cloud storage by healthcare providers, the pressure is on to expand capacity as the number and size of image files increases. In addition, under the Health Information Technology and Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, data sharing is an important goal. “Healthcare organizations are realizing that security provided by cloud-based storage systems is as good or better than their own,” says David Finn, health IT officer at Symantec. “We expect to see a lot of activity in this area over the next few years.”
Symantec Health offers cloud-based medical image archiving on demand for secure sharing of images and diagnostic reports over the Internet. The model is “infrastructure as a service” (IaaS), so healthcare providers pay only for the space they use. In addition, Symantec Health customers receive disaster recovery and business continuity benefits. “Once the images are in the cloud,” adds Finn, “they become accessible to other hospitals or referring physicians with appropriate authorization rights.” That availability helps reduce the need for duplicate imaging diagnostics, saving time and costs in patient care.