Savings Associated with Medical Chart Scanning

Obviously, this is determined on a case by case basis. You may want to call the Medical Records Scanning Professional in your area for an overview of your systems and procedures. However, there are some generalities about cost savings.

1. The more tangible costs include the labor cost to create the chart, store the chart, retrieve the file and process the file including faxing or copying and shipping. Then there are the tangible costs of the medical records including file folders and labels, paper costs, file cabinet costs, shipping costs, fax line costs, etc.

2. Over the life of the patient records, if only one in a hundred files is over nighted at a cost of $15, one is faxed at a phone charge of $.50 and your filing cabinets cost $100 and holds 200 files, and you put files in hanging folders at a cost of $.30 each, then already we have a cost per file of roughly a $1.00. When labor is added, the cost per file skyrockets.

Labor includes cost to

• create (label, package, copy) document
• file original document
• retrieve document (quadruple cost for lost or misfiled documents)
• refile document
• ship some documents
• fax some documents
• scan and email some documents

Without looking very hard, it becomes evident that the cost of the creating and maintaining a paper medical chart is between $5.00 and $15.00 and rising each month until the document can be destroyed.

These costs are before the ongoing expenses associated with occupancy, safety, security, etc.

These are the costs before the benefits associated with immediate customer service, immediate access to documents, etc.