Case Study: Synergy Practice Solutions VirtualScan Software

 Situation: Frustrated in Search for Document Management Solution

Synergy Practice Solutions helps medical practices in Maryland, Delaware, and Northern Virginia manage a range of tasks, including billing, regulatory compliance, human resources, and best practices for efficient business operations.

It’s a document-intensive business, and in the decade since the business launched in 2001, Synergy became inundated with paper. “We had basements full of filing cabinets with documents that had to be faxed and hand delivered,” says Christine Rommel, Business Manager for Synergy, which is based in Salisbury, Maryland. It became ever more costly and inefficient to use paper-based methods.

To improve its processes, the company in the mid-2000s turned to an electronic solution. However, the solution was not compatible with other company software programs, and, due to licensing issues, locked the company into using one scanner and one specific computer. If anything happened to the hardware, the company was forced into purchasing a new license. Synergy management felt that they had to find a better document solution that could help the company keep pace with the growing business.

 

Solution: Fujitsu Scanners and VirtualScan 

Synergy decided to partner with Tezla Consulting Group, which helped implement a solution that includes Fujitsu scanners and VirtualScan software from OCR Solutions.

 

“The combination of the VirtualScan software and Fujitsu scanners gives Synergy the flexibility to switch between different hardware devices,” says Joe Valentine, Senior Consultant with Tezla. “Also, Synergy did not have much success with the other scanners that they tried. Fujitsu scanners perform very well and provide advanced drivers.”

 

Synergy currently has five Fujitsu workgroup scanners capable of scanning up to 40 pages and 80 images per minute in monochrome, and up to 30 pages and 60 images a minute in color. The Fujitsu scanners also provide the capability of instantly cropping images as they are scanned, which is put to use when scanning small insurance cards that leave a lot of white space in the image file.

 

Synergy scans up to 5,000 documents on a typical workday. The documents, which can include anything from legal-sized patient notes to medical insurance cards, are scanned into the VirtualScan database. Clients can also remotely scan their data directly into the Synergy-hosted VirtualScan database using a secure virtual private network (VPN) connection.

 

Benefits: More Efficient Business Processes, Less Paper, Better Compliance

The solution using Fujitsu scanners and the VirtualScan software has proven to be fast, efficient, and robust. The success of the solution has helped Synergy move forward with its goal of moving to a full electronic medical records (EMR) system that will include a scanner at every desk.

 

“Some of our larger clients are going completely paperless, while other smaller ones may still rely on paper to some extent,” says Rommel. “In the near future there will be a requirement for all medical practices and medical billing to have an electronic system, where patient records will be accessed through a database rather than on paper charts. With that coming down the road, we are looking to encourage our clients to adopt new electronic imaging equipment.”

 

The electronic system also improves compliance by creating easily traced audit trails, and is helping Synergy dramatically cut its need for physical storage space.

 

Synergy Practice Solutions benefit snapshot:

 

• Real-time processing for insurance claims, instead of the average two-day wait time of the past
• Instant access to digitized patient notes instead of personnel searching through boxes of paper documents
• Physical storage space needed for paper documents cut by about 50 percent
• Ability of Fujitsu scanners to crop documents as they are scanned cuts down on file size, which produces smaller files and saves on database size
• Greater savings with reduced need for courier services to deliver documents between medical offices and Synergy