Sutter Health is one of the nation's leading not-for-profit networks of community-based health care providers. Established over 100 years ago, they deliver high-quality care in more than 100 Northern California communities. Sutter Health supports over two dozen locally run acute care hospitals, physician organizations, medical research facilities, region-wide home health and hospice care services, occupational health networks and long-term care centers.

Business Challenge

Sutter Health ranks among the nation’s most integrated health care networks. Continually striving for excellence, they felt the best way to improve the quality of patient care was to provide medical staff quick electronic access to existing patient records at secure desktop computers; that meant converting paper based medical records to electronic medical records. Initially, they attempted the conversion work themselves internally, but eventually hired an outside vendor to do the same: while both approaches worked with varying degrees of success, neither solution completely met the goal of converting paper records quickly and accurately, while substantially reducing costs.

Solution

John Chavez, a healthcare consultant, was tasked by Sutter to design a business process to convert patient records to a digital format rapidly and affordably. The new electronic records were to be seamlessly stored in conjunction with an Epic solution already in place. Through a highly selective process, FNTI was chosen for the ongoing conversion task.

FNTI, a well recognized full-service document conversion company, went to work immediately, converting paper records to digital records. Sutter Health delivered files from many locations three times a day to a secure, HIPAA compliant, FNTI conversion center. Upon arrival at FNTl, the files were logged into production control software for seamless tracking, then prepped for scanning. Paper documents were imaged using Kodak scanners in bi-tonal, grayscale and color, indexed by five critical fields, and then classified. Quality assurance procedures were executed throughout production and within 24 hours, the new electronic documents were transferred back to Sutter Health using secure FTP transmission. These new records were seamlessly stored and subsequently retrieved using an integrated Epic EMR solution already in place at Sutter Health.

Summary

The services provided by FNTI, allows Sutter Health to retrieve and review information in an efficient and real time manner, allowing for better medical care. Today, patient information is securely and easily accessed throughout the enterprise. As the amount of records increase on a daily basis requiring quick access, Sutter Health medical staff has more information at their fingertips, allowing for even better care. The Sutter Health HIM Directors say, "We have reduced our internal cost significantly while information in the system is more accurate and delivered much faster." FNTI is capable of meeting this business challenge by providing full-service conversion of the paper records efficiently and accurately, with a positive return on investment.