What's New with Printers and Scanners?

Despite the effort to create paper “light” medical offices, the likelihood (in the forseeeable future) that all data is going to flow electronically is extremely low. In fact, some would argue that we manage more paper now than in the past, with the exception of lab results. The reality is that medical practices manage an enormous number of paper documents in the office in the form of referral requests, consultation reports, historical patient data, diagnostic reports, and reports from third parties. All of this information has to make its way efficiently into the EMR and documents generated by the EMR (such as prescriptions and handouts) have to be provided to patients, medical colleagues, and a multitude of additional individuals.

Thus, the need to have good printers and scanners at one’s disposal to manage these documents is extremely important.

When thinking about document scanning management needs, I would suggest dividing documents into two distinct categories:

• Documents that need to be stored and archived for historical purposes. For example, old charts for which a summary may have been entered into one’s EMR, but the original documents have been stored based upon the provincial record storage guidelines.
• Documents generated on a day-to-day basis in the management of patient care.

Each of these document categories has different scanning requirements. It is impractical to use a small office-based scanner to enter and archive thousands of historical paper charts. In this instance, I would recommend using a commercial organization that has the equipment to scan these documents quickly and efficiently, can guarantee the media that are used to store the digital files will not degrade, and can securely dispose of the paper documents after scanning, if that is desirable. While this is more costly than having a family member or student scan the documents one page at a time, the accuracy and quick turnaround are worth the effort, plus you will no longer have to pay for storage. This is an important consideration if you are closing your practice and would like to be able to transfer patients to a colleague. Receiving a digital copy of a patient’s record is more desirable than a thick paper chart.

For day-to-day scanning of documents, there are a number of excellent small footprint scanners made by Fujitsu (ScanSnap series) and a wide range of scanners from Hewlett Packard. While it may be tempting to purchase a $100 scanner from your local Best Buy, the likelihood that this will meet your office needs in terms of volume and output format are small. Spend the extra money and make sure you have an industrial strength scanner that is going to provide years of service. Your staff will also be appreciative.

What is new in printer technology? Greater print efficiency and wireless capability are some of the most important considerations. Small footprint printers that can easily be installed in an examination room are desirable if you would like to print and hand information to a patient without disrupting the clinical encounter. If you have to walk out of the exam room to collect every document that is printed, it can be very disruptive to patient care. If you elect to install inkjet printers, expect the ongoing maintenance costs to be higher than an equivalent laser printer. It may be cost-effective to install a number of multifunction printer/scanners in your medical practice wirelessly connected to a network. For example, in the doctor’s common work area or as an additional scanner/printer should the primary scanner be in use. Brother makes an excellent series of wireless multifunction printers. Remember that if your office is dependent on a single multifunction printer/scanner and the device fails, you lose all of your devices at the same time. It is best to keep a spare in reserve in case of emergencies.

Have you had any experiences with printers or scanners that you would like to share? Click on the “Comments” link below to add your thoughts.

Comments

[David]

Incoming paper can be dramatically reduced if faxes are handled directly by the EMR software and, therefore, never printed. Only a very small proportion of referral letters/consultations arrive at my office in an envelope. In my setup (Jonoke), my staff handle 'faxes' by attaching the image file (PDF) of the document to a new or existing patient file and set the status of the image to be added to my 'To Do' list. Very simple indeed.

[Ian Pun]

I use the Fujitsu Scansnap S510M double sided scanner or a Brother MFC to scan into a SHARED folder in my Mac called SCANS_TO_ATTACH and inside that folder I have an ATTACHED_SCANS folder.

I scan the document into SCANS_TO_ATTACH and prefix the the filename with identifying names and date YYMMDD
eg.
BlowJoe_DrSpecialist_110730.pdf
BlowJoe_CXRNormal_110610.pdf

I then use Mac OSX Preview pdf reader to delete, rearrange, concatenate and comment the scanned pages.

The physical paper is put in a special box and not filed into the real paper folder chart. I will shred and discard after a year.

After the scan is attached to the OSCAR eChart, I drag it into ATTACHED_SCANS to know that it is done.

My secretary's BROTHER MFC also "One Button" scans to the SCANS_TO_ATTACH folder via FTP network transfer.

Faxes are received by Babytel email into pdf format (set this in the babytel website), They can be simply dragged from the Mac OSX Mail reader into the SCANS_TO_ATTACH folder, relabelled to appropriate filename and attached to the eChart.

All these features are all built into the Mac. I did not need to buy any extra software.

For every exam room (I have three), I put a computer, two monitors, printer and scanner. Scanner is each room is useful when patients brings you records/forms from elsewhere. Don't use an iPad. It's only good for output, not input. I tried it and it was too restrictive (small screen, hard to type). Use the big guns.

[Rene Caissie]

We used to use the Fujitsu Scansnap line of scanners. In terms of speed I am yet to see a scanner that is as fast and as mobile. However, we just switched to the HP scanjet 3000 which our EMR supports and allows us to scan files directly into our patient's records. The speed isn't the same but skipping the uploading step is definitely worth it!