Stimulus Funds for E-Records Augur Big Windfall for Small Health Firms

By JACOB GOLDSTEIN

"Big companies including General Electric Co. will likely profit from the billions of federal stimulus dollars going to doctors who buy and use electronic health records. But little-known niche players could be among the biggest winners.

One such company is eClinicalWorks, a closely held firm in Westborough, Mass. The company, founded a decade ago by computer-programmer Girish Kumar Navani, his cousin and his physician brother-in-law, now has about 750 employees and expects $100 million in revenue this year. In the next few years, the company plans to hire 500 more people, up from 150 before the stimulus bill was approved."

"The $787 billion stimulus package Congress approved in February promises more than $20 billion in outlays for health-information technology, coming mostly between 2011 and 2015, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. Physicians using electronic records will be eligible for more than $40,000 each in Medicare incentive payments over several years starting in 2011. Hospitals can also qualify for millions of dollars in incentive payments. Doctors and hospitals not going electronic by 2015 will be subject to penalties."

An electronic health record, or electronic medical record, (EMR), replaces a patient's paper file. EMR systems can incorporate safety features such as automatically alerting a doctor if a patient has prescriptions for drugs with dangerous interactions. Proponents believe EMRs can also reduce wasteful spending from unnecessary testing, help doctors spot trends in their practices and enable agencies such as Medicare to pool anonymous medical data to track public-health issues.

LIN-CUM, Inc. is contracted with several major regional health systems, medical clinics, professional groups and hospitals throughout Arizona, in bringing these centers and offices into the "paperless" offices we've been talking about for decades!  to discuss how we can make this happen for YOU, installing scanning workstations and systems in your offices and departments, employing top quality, fully supported scanners such as Kodak and Fujitsu.  Simultaneously, we perform the backfile conversion at our operations center in Phoenix; this completes the conversion and arms you with a totally electronic system in the shortest time and most cost-effectively.  (See our Document Management) and Workstations pages)     Contact Lin-Cum at 602-233-1230, or email clientservices@lincum.com

Now, More than Ever – Document Management

Regardless of a slow economy, document management's value propositions hold up.

OpEd, February 2009
Written by: Gregory J. Schloemer, president of DocuWare Corporation

(Click here for more information)

For timely information regarding records safety,

records management procedures, disaster planning and  other information critical to protection and backing up of vital information and records, check the ARMA -Arizona Chapter website at http://armaaz.org

LIN-CUM's confidentiality-bound staff performs your authorized shredding and  destruction of source  documents and records after they have been converted and delivered to you, with backup sets stored in our own vaults; we take care of your  records like they were ours! 

Are We There Yet?

•  Experts predicted the paperless office would be the norm by the 1990s.  It started clear back in the 1970's, when BusinessWeek magazine predicted " ----office terminals linked to each other and to electronic filing cabinets"; "most record handling will be electronic.".  By the mid-1990s, we were actually moving in the opposite direction!  Today,  "Businesses continue to print, copy and fax more than a trillion pages each year", peaking in 2007 at more than 1.019 trillion pages, according to InfoTrends, Massachusetts-based market research and consulting firm.

• A national survey recently found that businesses are still archiving paper printouts for 62 percent of their important documents.  The survey of 882 companies, released in February 2010 by the content management association AIIM, indicated that most businesses still believe paper documents are needed for legal reasons.

• In today's economy, there are MANY motivators for management to adopt the the paperless office ideas.

  • Cost Savings.  The cost of paper, envelopes, postage, couriers, printers, copiers and, yes--filing cabinets!

  • The labor and overhead cost savings associated with these processes.

  • Helping the environment; saving trees!  Less trash and paper disasters!

  • The technology is available to give even home-based businesses the option of going paperless. Scanners for electronically storing documents are getting smaller and more affordable. We can return from a meeting or conference, drop off the business cards you've collected, into a scanner and save them digitally; time saved and quick, easy retrieval.

  • Portable tablets, such as Apple's iPad, are also contributing to paperless office.  Switching to a tablet PC eliminates the need to walk around with a pad of paper at meetings; take notes immediately on the tablet.

  • "Googling" enables us to quickly research a subject and download the essentials to our hard drive; electronic storage is quick, very cost-effective and paperless!  We can go directly to publications and sources of information, without hardcopy subscription!

  • Using a Web-based billing and payment system eliminates paper created in the invoice process.  Accounting systems such as QuickBooks allows us to e-print and email invoices.

  • Younger people -- especially those that have grown up with home and classroom computers -- have adapted very quickly.

  •   Offices are scanning their paper files, or having them scanned by a service bureau, and storing them on their servers for quick access and disposition.

  •   Office space that was consumed by file cabinets and supplies, are now being used for more productive purposes. 

  • Time spent filing, retrieving, re-filing, and tracking down misfiled documents, is now spent doing more cost-effective and productive activities.

  As a result, workflow has gone from sometimes waiting days to retrieve records that were archived off site or backrooms, to accessing the same files in two or three seconds -- saving time, increasing  efficiency and improving customer service.

  The "paperless" office may not happen for ages yet, but the "less-paper office" is becoming much more popular, so "jump on" - you'll find it profitable and refreshing!