New Survey from Iron Mountain Shows Hospitals Lack Standard Approach
to Digitizing Patient Records; 1 in 4 Spending $100 Million or More
Jul. 12, 2011 (Business Wire) -- One year after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) set criteria for the "meaningful use" of electronic health records, 70 percent of hospitals expect to claim federal subsidies for meeting stage one requirements. Yet 78 percent expect to continue to treat patients using paper records for up to five more years despite the financial incentive for meeting these requirements and an electronic medical record's (EMR) inherent promise of a paperless treatment cycle.
These are two findings of a recent survey from information management company Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) that asked 200 health information professionals how they're scanning paper patient records and planning to use them moving forward. The results reveal hospital – lacking guidelines from CMS for scanning paper patient files – are taking different approaches to digitizing records, with scanning budgets sometimes exceeding $100 million. Key findings of the survey include:
- Only half (49 percent) of hospitals say they've scanned what they need and are within their budget, while 23 percent report they're within budget but still have a backlog of records to scan;
- More than half (54 percent) are scanning records at onsite records rooms, while nearly one third (29 percent) use a centralized scanning location;
- Seventy-two percent rely on full-time employees to scan compared to just nine percent who outsource to third parties and six percent who use part-time staff;
- Forty-four percent of hospitals are not explicitly measuring the effectiveness or productivity of their scanning process;
- Once scanning is complete, 58 percent will shred their paper records, while 38 percent plan to store the paper in their onsite records room or in an offsite facility.
"The Meaningful Use guidelines set the clock ticking for hospitals to claim their share of the billions set aside for successful EMR transition," said Ken Rubin, senior vice president and general manager for healthcare at Iron Mountain. "Reaching those incentives involves changing the way paper records are used and accessed by hospitals, a process that leaves most hospitals in a prolonged period of using ‘hybrid' records – both paper and electronic. Accelerating through this hybrid period by effectively converting paper records is essential to greater utilization of an EMR to drive down costs and improve patient care.