What Others Are Scanning Now

Are you thinking about starting a scanning project? So are many others. The following are written requests that various companies have made to the members of Document Scanning Companies of America. These various requests might give you some ideas about what can be done in scanning and what you should consider.

In each case, the customer is asked "What can we do for you". Here are some of their initial answers to that question.

• We need to scan an estimate of 3500 to 4000 charts with each chart containing 50 pages. I need an estimate. Please get back to ASAP
• We are looking to find a company to scan old medical records and convert them to disk/electronic format. Any information on your company you can share would be greatly appreciated.
• (Scan) real estate appraisals
• I would like to get a quote for both Storage and Scanning service for up to 200 projects a year, avg size 24"x36" 10 pages per project.
• We have approximately 90 bankers boxes of patient charts we would like scanned and stored as pdf files and then stored on a hard drive/back up system
• We would like to have documents scanned to a disc in order to shred hard copies and minimize clutter. The scanning process would also need to allow us to retrieve documents by conducting a search of a word(s) included in the document or file name.

• Rough estimate for scanning. Options of coming to the company to scan, or shipping the files to you
• …. County, public schools to digitize all files from Human Resources looking for a quote and scope of project.
• We are looking for a company to come in and scan documents to the computer for us.
• I need driver logs scanned and sorted by month for easy retrieval.
• Need to scan old patient charts. Estimating 100 boxes of charts.
• Please advise if you can also scan large size drawings.
• We are a fire and ems service and need someone that provide HIPAA compliant servece.
• Public Television station. This would be an extremely large scanning project of both paper and production content, but uncertain at this point as to how large.
• I need driver logs scanned and sorted by month for easy retrieval.
• Need to scan old patient charts. Estimating 100 boxes of charts.

If you would like to start a scanning project and need some advice, please contact the members of the association in your area.

Specialty Scanning Services

There are a variety of specialty scanning services. Not all of our members perform each of these services. However, there are some member who do perform these specialty services.

• Client Site (on-site) Scanning
• Computer Output TO Microfilm (COM)
• Electronic Invoicing and Payment Procurement (EIPP / EBPP)
• Electronic File Hosting
• X-Ray Scanning

Scanned Files Are More Secure

The benefit of document scanning to area businesses, hospitals, clinics, law firms and governmental agencies is substantial. The benefits include increased security of confidential documents, which is especially important to hospitals, clinics and doctors offices. Only assign access codes to those who are responsible with the access to the files. Where as in many cases, the entire office, outside contractors, custodians, etc had access to paper files.

The pure number of people who have access to any given office leads to a similar number of people who are not authorized, but have access purely because the have access to the office.

For example, if the office is cleaned, the cleaning people have access to the files. Granted, file rooms can be off-limits to the cleaning staff. However, records that have been checked out, may be available to be compromised by virtue of not being protected by the person who checked out the files. If there is a special employee who is responsible for retrieving requested files, that person consequently has access to the confidential records

If your paper files are taking too much room, it might be time to move the paper files to a professional offsite record storage company and scan the critical documents so they are online when ever you need them.

If you lose paper files or if more than one person at a time needs access to a file, then scanning is going to be very valuable to you.

What Else Can Be Done With Scanned Document

There are many other things that can be done with a scanned document.  During the scanning process, information can be electronically extracting from the document which can be used in other aspects of the business.  For example, if you scan a purchase order, you can extract some data from that document into other systems.  You can extract the customer information about who issued the PO and "electronically" send that data to the credit department to approve the customer.  Item numbers and quantities can be extracted and electronically sent to the inventory control system.  This type of data would often times be entered by a clerk at a later time, which has two draw backs.  First there is a chance for human error in data entry and secondly, there is the amount of time it takes to move the document to the typist and get the entry work done.

An additional benefit is making your processes automated - process oriented - systematic.  If your processes are automated / standardized, it makes it easier for your business to grow. If most of the processes are automatic, then adding more transactions is a very well defined process. These systems can be scaled up to add more capacity. Also over time, as you mature as a user of such systems, you can increasingly add new functions to systems like these.

EMPLOYEE TRAINING: If the data is handled in a systematic and automatic basis based on a set of rules you set up, then training new people becomes much easier. You have a blue print of what is happening and there is much less chance that a particular manager or new employee will harm your business by changing processes.

The idea of automating processes can be found in the biggest companies such as McDonalds, Coca Cola, etc.