Electronic Document Management Solutions and News

5 TIPS TO STAY COMPLIANT WITH DOCUMENT RETENTION

Many organizations are required to retain documents to comply with grants, government agency guidelines and the IRS. An electronic document management application makes this process easy by helping to organize and track your documents online. Here are five ways that an application like DocuVantage OnDemand® can assist your organization in staying compliant:

1. Keep documents in a single repository. By utilizing one area for storing information, businesses can gain better organization and efficiency. DocuVantage OnDemand® makes it simple to capture, convert, distribute, store, and manage your documents and data in a single online location.

2. Set deadlines for providing information. Alerts and e-mail notifications can be set as reminders for updating contracts, editing documents, reviewing terms, etc. This ensures that you are never late in submitting necessary information.

3. Review files and case audit trails. When participating in an audit, it is often necessary to show when a document has been altered and by whom. With an electronic document management application, any edits or changes made to a document are tracked and easily identified through a version trail, along with the time the change was made and the name of the user who made the alteration.

4. Store data in a secure data facility. Storing data in a filing cabinet puts your disaster recovery plan at risk. By utilizing an online document management application, you are building in a reliable business continuity strategy. DocuVantage OnDemand® resides in a secure, Tier IV data facility that specializes and serves customers who require world-class reliability and network diversity. This data center, Equinix, is the largest global network-neutral data center and Internet exchange services company in the world. By using DocuVantage OnDemand®, clients have access to one of the most dependable data centers in the industry.

5. Monitor who has access to your documents and data. Use multi-level security access to determine which users have access and to what documents, track changes by author and shut-off access when necessary.

Business owners and leadership teams have enough to worry about without having to manually monitor their information to make sure it is stored and tracked properly. When it comes to streamlining your business and compliance, DocuVantage OnDemand® takes the room for error out and provides a straightforward option for organizing your information, thus giving companies more time to dedicate toward fulfilling their mission, driving new business and serving their customers.

FEEL SAFE IN A SaaS WORLD

In a down economy, many businesses experience a reduction in headcount and are looking for inexpensive software solutions that can be implemented in place of the lost staff.

As a result, these companies are considering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based applications that allow them to subscribe to use the software. These online applications require no equipment to purchase, have limited-to-no needs for IT support, and are typically offered as a monthly subscription. But how can you feel comfortable storing your data online?In reality, it is much safer to store your data online than to host it on a server at your place of business, or even worse, store the documents in a filing cabinet or storage shed. In the event that a disaster strikes your area, your information could be destroyed. With a SaaS document and records management solution, businesses reduce their risk by storing their information in an offsite, secure data facility.

Here are even more reasons to consider a SaaS application:

Reliability
As a leader in your company, you understand that protecting important documents and information is critical. You need to be sure that when you consider hosting your mission critical information with another provider, that their facility is safe and reliable. Because of this, DocuVantage OnDemand's customer assets are stored and protected within the same infrastructure that protects the leading financial, communications and Fortune 100 companies in the world.

As a DocuVantage OnDemand® user, your information resides with Equinix, a secure, Tier IV data facility that specializes and serves customers who require world-class reliability and network diversity. The Equinix network is used by more than 2000 global companies including Google, Sony, Microsoft, GE, IBM, AT&T, British Telecom, Adobe, Merrill Lynch, PayPal, and Yahoo!

Control
Besides protecting your information from outside intruders, you may also want to protect information internally from department-to-department. A secure electronic document management solution allows you to control who has access, what documents your users can access and what workflow steps need to be put into action when/if a user does access a document. The multi-level security settings allow you to monitor, control and change access permissions as needed. As the administrator, you set the limit.

Flexibility and Support
With a SaaS application, software updates and enhancements are made by the SaaS provider without needing to involve your IT department. You also have the capability of purchasing only the functionality you need today, and then working with the SaaS provider to build upon your original application platform to increase functionality when your business expands/contracts. This flexibility is another reason SaaS is a safer alternative.

With all these benefits offered in an online document and records management application, would you believe that it can also help you reduce costs? Contact DocuVantage to learn more.

DocuVantage OnDemand Success Story: Health Integrated

DocuVantage OnDemand® helps a health management company provide faster response to its customers.

As a Targeted Population Health Management provider to commercial and government health plans, Health Integrated’s mission is to improve quality of life and clinical outcomes while reducing healthcare claim costs.As part of Health Integrated's overall efforts to streamline its business processes to enhance the quality of its services to its health plan customers, to prepare for rapid growth, and to meet stringent regulatory state and federal requirements related to healthcare document management, the company made the decision to automate and electronically manage its Outpatient Treatment Request (OTR) documents.

The hallways at Health Integrated were filled with over-flowing filing cabinets and the company needed an efficient system that would allow it to electronically process the OTRs that were faxed in daily.

Additionally, new state laws required that the company be able to maintain and produce the signed documents. This would have required the purchase of more locking fireproof cabinets, taking up even more space.

Craig Wigginton, CTO at Health Integrated, wanted to implement a solution that would allow employees to access OTRs in a matter of seconds from anywhere using the Internet, while securely protecting and storing the information electronically.

In 2007, Mr. Wigginton began to research available document management solutions. It was important that he find a solution available as a Software-as-a-Service platform, that was flexible enough to grow with Health Integrated. It was also important that he find an application with a user interface that was as easy to navigate with integrated, rules-based workflow to automate indexing and document processing.

Although the primary goal was to help his company go paperless, he was also looking for a solution that would allow Health Integrated to comply with audit requests in a timely manner. "In healthcare, we are often required to respond to case audits, which are extremely time consuming and usually require producing volumes of paper records with very little lead time," said Wigginton. "We needed a platform that would allow us to comply in providing this information at a moment's notice while driving our paperless initiatives at the same time."

Within a short amount of time of working with DocuVantage OnDemand®, Health Integrated was fully up and running with an automated rules-based workflow that delivered the faxed documents to the processing teams. In addition, Health Integrated now had a disaster recovery plan in place for its documents and was on track to realize a reduction in administrative costs.

The latest advancement for Health Integrated is managing its signed contracts. Using the integrated document alert feature, the system alerts employees proactively when a contract's expiration date approaches, reminding them to review the contract.

Health Integrated no longer worries about losing documents or missing a contract deadline and has the capability of locating documents by keyword in a matter of seconds. Automating key business processes, including OTR and contract management, allows Health Integrated to focus more on developing its core business and serving its customers, resulting in tremendous company growth over the past year.

"We have realized tangible and intangible cost-saving benefits that allow us to run a more efficient business, which of course translates to better service for our customers. Since the DocuVantage platform went live, we've had 100 percent success in responding to audit requests and, as an added bonus, we have our hallways back," said the CTO.

Company Profile

• Company: Health Integrated
• Locations:
• Tampa, FL
• Pleasanton, CA
• Lynnwood, WA

• Founded: 1996 by Dr. Sam Toney
• Markets Served: Commercial andGovernment health plans
• Numbers of members reached: 6 million

Want to find out how other companies are solving challenges across their organizations? Please visit http://www.docuvantage.com/c/solutions/.

• SaaS Still on the Rise, Despite IT Spending Slowdown