Management of paper documents and information flow in the hospital business office requires careful planning just to meet the goals of the hospital.

On top of this, the volume and complexity of this information is seemingly ever-increasing, a result of ever-increasing layers of direct and indirect regulatory requirements imposed upon the hospital.

Surprisingly, despite the advent and fairly widespread use of HIPAA EDI standards, evidence indicates the volume of paper documents processed per bed per hospital is not shrinking, but rather is steadily increasing.

It is true that the use of E-billing has had a dramatic impact. It is a brake on paper growth, but the growth continues at a lower rate nonetheless. E-billing and E-document management will never eliminate the use of paper.

Managing the circulation and storage of growing volumes, and keeping apace of the related exposure issues, can be daunting.

The strong challenge that HIPAA privacy and security rules presents to the hospital business office has grown as well, with the implementation and expansion of breach reporting and liability under the 2009 HITECH act.

Altogether, with the complexity, volumes, and sensitivity involved, an organization would naturally explore technological solutions.

At first glance a traditional Document Imaging system may seem appealing. Especially if it is implemented as part of a Medical Records or enterprise system, and even more especially if it is available as an add-on module for the hospital's current information system.

Unfortunately, these modules and typical document imaging systems do not meet the needs of the business office very well.

The reasons are clear and result from the extremely unique nature of the business office documents themselves. They are not like medical records or other organizational documents with a predictable format and identified by one or two pieces of information. Business office documents vary enormously in format and content, are often information-dense, and originate from hundreds of sources outside of the hospital.

Creating a technological E-document solution for the hospital business office requires a different way of thinking.

Drawing on their own long-term experience in business office processes, the founders of Healthcare Reports made a large investment in the careful design and development from the ground up of a powerful E-document solution intended specifically for the healthcare business office. The results exceeded expectations.

The solution offers extremely powerful document retrieval, HIPAA Access Logs, and unlimited secured storage. The hospital business office can rest assured it is utilizing cost effective, high performance technology that is proven and in everyday widespread use.