Hospitals need to manage huge piles of documents each day such as medical documents, documents related to insurance, invoices, and much more. Sometimes, the same type of documents would be available in different formats. For example, the medical history form for diabetes would be different from the dental history form. It’s no wonder that proper document management is a difficult task for healthcare organizations. Document indexing provides the solution as it allows you to correlate or tag documents with various search criteria so that it is easy to retrieve whatever is required easily.
Carrying out the indexing process manually can be a strenuous and time consuming task. Suppose that you are indexing medical history forms for diabetes and dental problems. You need to find all the patient forms for each of these categories, enter the relevant data manually, and assign a key for each type of document. Automated document indexing provides the solution to this issue – data is automatically extracted from the scanned documents and exported to separate folders for each type of document.
To gain maximum benefits from automated indexing, consider the following factors:
- Clear Overview of Automating Projects – Have a clear view of the projects for which you want to implement automated indexing. Choose the projects that can ensure higher and faster ROI with automation.
- Superior Recognition Technology – Automated indexing will be effective only if you choose accurate recognition technology. Barcode/Patch Code Recognition, OCR (machine printed text recognition), constrained ICR (handwriting recognition) and unconstrained ICR are some of the technologies offering high levels of accuracy. However, it’s important to determine which recognition technology you need to use for the records you want to automate. For example, OCR is suitable for indexing medical history forms.
- Accuracy of Recognition – Regardless of the type of technology used, you should get top accuracy of recognition in the long run. This can be ensured by testing the accuracy of the recognition component of the capture design at the beginning of the process.
- Ensure the Quality of Output – Mishaps in the automated indexing system will generate erratic results. To avoid that, implement quality assurance procedures through which you can analyze the results thoroughly and resolve the errors if any.
- Verification – Check whether you have actually processed all that you wanted to process.
- Proper Documentation – It is very important to document the details of processes. Accurate documents can help your scanning and indexing staff to work efficiently and generate quality results.
- Document Indexing Services – Outsourcing automated indexing process is a sensible option. It will save time and resources spent on in-house processes. Reliable data entry companies provide customized indexing solutions which include organizing documents, creating relevant indexes, categorizing documents and setting up databases for future document retrieval.
