Grays Harbor Community Hospital Advances Forms Barcoding with Access Intelligent Forms Sui

Jan. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- After deploying a Valco enterprise document management (EDM) system in 2009, Grays Harbor Community Hospital, located in Aberdeen, Wa., used a third-party  vendor to barcode patient forms.

While satisfied with the quality of the work, IT administrators realized that an e-forms management system would offer forms barcoding and many other useful features. Access Intelligent Forms Suite (IFS) fit the bill.

“We needed a way to barcode patient forms, update these forms as needed and reduce forms waste,” said Pam Beattie, IT systems analyst at GHCH. “Access Intelligent Form Suite best met these needs, and will be a great complement to our Valco document management system.”  

GHCH is in the midst of a pilot project for e-forms with Access e-Forms Repository (EFR) – a component of Access IFS – in the ambulatory infusion services (AIS), cardiac rehabilitation and diabetes education departments. Beattie revealed that the project is going well.

“When we went to the AIS department to train our staff all the nurses said, ‘That’s easy,’” she said. “Access e-Convert is making forms conversion easy and we’re finding it simple to create new forms.”

Access IFS will enable GHCH staff members to print patient forms on demand with demographics and barcodes applied to any of the three pilot departments. This automated barcoding will offer several benefits.

“Right now people are spending time manually affixing barcoded labels and when these aren’t straight it affects scanning,” Beattie said. “Using the Access system will eliminate this issue, save time and ensure forms are indexed correctly in Valco.”

Technology projects can only be successful if there is proactive planning, well-executed deployment and successful collaboration between the vendor and customer. This has been the case with GHCH’s e-forms initiative.

“I’ve been doing health information technology deployments for more than 10 years and Access’s professional services and implementation teams are the best I’ve worked with,” Beattie said. “The documentation Access provided has also been very helpful.”

One of GHCH’s primary motivators for replacing pre-printed forms was increased version control. With paper forms, it’s difficult to ensure staff members are using new forms and that old ones are disposed. This is not the case anymore at GHCH.

“With Access IFS, we know we’re using the latest version of each form, which helps us meet JCAHO standards,” Beattie said. “It’s very easy to modify forms and create new ones.”

An Access product is also proving its worth in the AP and payroll departments. Previously, both departments used printers with an ELF Chip, which is no longer supported by the vendor. This meant that staff members were spending time hand stamping checks. With Access Check Printing System (CPS), digital signatures are applied, eliminating this manual task.

“People in AP and payroll say that the clarity and quality of checks is better with Access Check Printing System,” Beattie said.  “They’re also happy that it’s now a lot easier to make changes to our checks.”

GHCH plans to extend its Access solution to the patient registration and to introduce the full Intelligent Forms Suite later in 2011 to take advantage of additional forms management and workflow capabilities.

About Grays Harbor Community Hospital

Grays Harbor Community Hospital's health care team provides diagnostic treatment and patient care services of the highest standards, while meeting the organization’s mission to heal, comfort and serve its community. In 2009 GHCH opened a new Wound Treatment Center and in 2010 the facility was named as a PRC 4-Star Top Performer Hospital in Radiology.


About Access

Access is the world’s leading electronic forms (e-forms) management, automation and workflow software provider. Our solutions transform any paper-intensive forms process into a paperless, collaborative workflow. Hundreds of hospitals worldwide are using Access solutions to improve patient care and safety, cut costs and enhance electronic health records (EHR), patient safety and downtime planning initiatives. Learn more at www.accessefm.com.


See Access EFM solutions in action at HIMSS 2011 Booth 2317.

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Access is the world’s leading electronic forms management, automation and workflow provider. Our solutions transform any paper-intensive forms process into a paperless, collaborative workflow. See Access Enterprise Forms Management in action at HIMSS 2011 Booth 2317.