The Real Cost of Paperwork: Increase Savings with Healthcare Document Management Software

With powerful digital tools at their disposal, forward-thinking healthcare executives are transforming patient care by greatly decreasing paperwork and leveraging a dynamic repository for all digital files that not only houses documents, but provides automated workflows, compliance checks, security, access control, and more. Document management software (DMS)—It’s a game-changer when it comes to driving cost savings and reaping big productivity benefits. 

Turning Paper into Profit

As healthcare organizations seek to streamline costs and boost efficiency, it’s important to examine the true price of paperwork, an essential tool in patient care that is often dramatically underestimated from a cost standpoint. Let’s look at some of the ways DMS alleviates the paper burden and transforms it into an asset.

Paper, Paper, Everywhere—Eliminated

The most obvious cost savings delivered by healthcare document management software is in the cost of paper itself. This includes purchasing the paper and ink and the printing, storing, and distribution of paper (mailing or otherwise), all of which add up quickly. Additionally, all printing equipment must be maintained at a cost, including printers, copiers, and faxes. Couple this expense with the square footage price required to maintain large filing cabinets and storage rooms to house and archive these paper documents, and the costs multiply. With DMS, these paper costs and storage space burdens disappear, ushering in digital documents that also provide deeper savings in other ways.

Maximized Space

Without the burden of filing cabinets, not only can healthcare facilities enjoy the cost savings of downsizing space, but they can also reconfigure their current space for better use, whether it be providing more comfortable waiting room facilities or improving their examination rooms.

Paper Time is Money

Another consideration is the sheer amount of time consumed by dealing with paperwork—whether it’s data entry, keeping track of paperwork, retrieving, organizing, and filing; to duplication complications, inaccuracies, and delays—paperwork accounts for more hours burned and productivity lost. If you’re familiar with the adage, “handle each paper just once,” you’ll appreciate the brilliance of healthcare document management software. DMS automates all functions, providing expedient search features, version control, and greater accuracy. In this way, it saves considerable time and money.

Related: The Cost-Saving Potential of Cloud-Based Document Management Software.

Greater Remote and Telehealth Possibilities

Since paperwork processes do not lend themselves well to remote and telehealth trends, it’s important to recognize how a digitally-based system could facilitate these needs by offering secure access to patient records and other critical documents from any device anywhere, negating the need for mailed documents that are not secure. 

Better Revenue Cycle Efficiencies

Proper revenue cycle management can have a profound effect on positive cash flow and ultimately on financial success. Since paper processes cause delays in billing, claims processes, and reimbursements, it goes to follow that a digital system can eradicate these delays and foster faster billing cycles and quicker claims processing. This creates better cash flow and revenue, which increases the healthcare organization’s financial stability.

Inaccuracies and Compliance Challenges

It’s clear paperwork also carries the potential for more human-made entry errors. In a world where compliance is king, this can have devastating consequences, not the least for the patient’s health. Additionally, large fines and legal ramifications can follow suit. With DMS, guardrails for compliance ensure everything is done to regulation, with audit trails, secure access controls, and version control. The cost savings these features generate are significant.

Sustainability

In addition to removing the costs of paper purchasing, storage, and management, eliminating paper from healthcare organizations signals a greater embrace of sustainability, which is a goal most healthcare organizations currently pursue, helping the planet for their organizations and patients alike.

Conquer Paperwork with Digidoc

The real cost of paperwork goes beyond tangible numbers. It encompasses the costs of space, longer accounting processes, labor costs, productivity losses, compliance risks, and even environmental goals. As healthcare organizations strive to keep up with the latest technology while also meeting the latest compliance regulations, moving to DMS to manage paper patient documents is not only a cost-saver and efficiency booster, but a true necessity. To see how quitting the paper habit can help your healthcare organization, reach out to our team to see how Digidoc can be a good fit for your healthcare system.