Sutter Health cures faxing inefficiencies

“RightFax allows us to eliminate paper, resulting in cost savings and efficiency gains for our users.”
-Teddy Halidy
Systems Engineer
Sutter Health

Results

• • Integrated, efficient faxing enhances patient care, user productivity
    
  • Consolidated, virtual environment eliminates paper, machine maintenance expenses

Serving patients and their families in more than 100 Northern California cities and towns, Sutter Health doctors, not-for-profit hospitals and other healthcare service providers share resources and expertise to advance healthcare quality and access. The Sutter Medical Network includes many of California’s top- performing, highest-quality physician organizations as measured annually by the Integrated Healthcare Association. Sutter-affiliated hospitals are regional leaders in cardiac care, women’s and children’s services, cancer care, orthopedics and advanced patient-safety technology. Sutter Health cares for more than three million people—nearly one percent of the U.S. population. Truven Health Analytics™, in the only survey of its kind, named Sutter Health and its Valley Operating Unit among the nation’s top health systems in 2016.

Paper-based faxing complications

To better meet patient needs, Sutter Health had to rethink its fax system to keep up with prescription demand. Professionals managed thousands of prescriptions every day through time-intensive methods—handwritten notes, printed pages delivered via fax machines or couriers and walls of storage folders. Manual processes posed challenges for physicians, business units and patients. “If a patient can’t get a pharmacy prescription in a timely way, we have to find a solution,” said Teddy Halidy, systems engineer with Sutter Health.

Integration with medical records, email

Sutter Health recognized a need to standardize and speed fax communication with technology that could scale to meet ongoing demands. The healthcare system installed OpenText RightFax, integrating electronic faxing with its Epic electronic medical records system. The combination ensured speed and consistency for pharmacy prescriptions.

Over time—and with proven reliability—Sutter Health expanded beyond faxing prescriptions. The healthcare network now sends and receives more than one million faxes per month, ranging from lab results and medical records to letters and referrals, totaling one to 500 pages each. The not-for-profit healthcare system also integrated support processes into RightFax, including communication with doctors.

For outbound documents, faxes arrive directly from Epic to recipients, while inbound faxes attach to patient records in the system. “All of our hospitals and equipment are now on Epic,” Halidy said. “We have one of the largest implementations of Epic and RightFax is a vital part of that solution.”

Users also needed updated document handling methods. Now, professionals in many departments—including human resources, finance and legal—send and receive files via RightFax for processing without printing. Through integration with Microsoft® Exchange they manage faxes directly within their email application. This new process unifies and connects Sutter Health’s network of care, enabling the health system to provide timely—and exceptional—service to patients.

Customizable solution and ability to scale

OpenText RightFax scales with the healthcare network as its hospitals expand and helps enable seamless updates as technology transforms. Over the years, Sutter Health moved to a clustered RightFax environment for high availability and to virtual management for cost efficiency. To maintain reliability for mission-critical communication, Sutter Health tests all environments to ensure consistent patient interactions.

“Anything that we get from OpenText that is new, anything that they may recommend, we run it through development and quality assurance environments and then implement it in production,” Halidy said. “We make sure that they work and they’re all at exactly the same level.”

Fax efficiency supports patient care, productivity

RightFax drives timely and reliable exchange of prescriptions, referrals and other medical records that are an integral component of patient care at Sutter Health. The healthcare system streamlines and speeds document processes by fax-enabling its electronic medical records and email applications. It realizes cost efficiencies through centralized, virtual management.

Efficiency, service

Smooth RightFax integration with Epic has proven effective in limiting faxing issues: physicians, support staff and others work fluidly from the EMR solution, sending and receiving files as needed. The same is true for other business units that exchange faxes without leaving familiar desktop and email applications.

When new users come on board to RightFax, Halidy still shakes his head in amazement watching the transformation from paper-heavy methods to integrated, electronic productivity. “As I talk with departments and understand their workflow, I think, ‘Wow. Now, we have a better process for you to do this,’ ” Halidy noted. “We’re always looking for new processes for our internal customers to improve their workflows.”

All workflow and productivity improvements enhance the ability for Sutter Health to provide quality care to patients, as well as maintain responsive relationships with partners and doctors.

Cost savings

All across its network, doctors, nurses and employees work to develop efficiencies, share best practices and implement innovative and creative solutions—all to make their high-quality services more affordable for patients. Following RightFax implementation for desktop use, for example, Sutter Health eliminated hundreds of fax machines with plans to achieve 100 percent paperless operations. While a few multi-function printers remain in central locations, the reduction in machines returns substantial savings in materials and maintenance. “RightFax allows us to eliminate paper, resulting in cost savings and efficiency gains for our users,” Halidy said. “We also save on costs since we have fewer fax machines to maintain. These efficiencies help keep care more affordable.”

A single, virtual management environment also supports cost efficiency. “Everything we have is now virtual management, which saves costs on hardware and upgrading,” Halidy said. Furthermore, consolidation into a single RightFax environment eased administration.

Business continuity and growth

Halidy and his team are investigating RightFax integration with Microsoft® SharePoint® and adding the OpenText™ RightFax Searchable PDF Module to match and upload incoming faxes to patient data in Epic through optical character recognition. With several integrations in a high availability environment, RightFax is now a tier-one application for Sutter Health. “The solution is a vital part of our disaster recovery,” noted Halidy. Testing and support assures Sutter Health employees have communication tools when they need them, in all circumstances and even as the healthcare network expands.