Improving Clinical Documentation: Simplifying Fax Processing for Healthcare Providers

Clinical documentation plays a vital role in delivering quality patient care. However, reliance on faxes and other unstructured documents to support medical information exchange remains a major challenge. This is especially true for providers like nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and other organizations that have to manually enter medical records into their EHR, or lack the resources to do so. Manual data entry, potential errors, and delayed response times induced by manual processes from fax communications can hamper the efficiency and accuracy of patient care. Fortunately, Consensus Cloud Solutions has recently released a version of our NLP and AI software, Clarity Clinical Documentation™ to directly address clinical document workflows, especially around fax and other unstructured documents, to improve how providers handle medical records.

The Unstructured Data Predicament

An astonishing 70% of healthcare providers still depend on paper fax for exchanging medical information. Nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities are among those heavily reliant on this technology. Fax has endured due to its simplicity and reliability, but these strengths come at a cost. Every faxed document in healthcare contains vital information that requires action, such as lab reports, imaging, and clinician referrals. Faxed documents are unstructured data – meaning that data is not ready to use. There are other unstructured documents, such as scanned images and handwritten notes, that administrative staff may receive and need to process. But processing documents with unstructured data involves laborious tasks like scanning and attaching them to patient records. This not only increases operational costs but also hampers patient care due to slower response times and limited information made available to support clinicians.

Enter Clarity Clinical Documentation™

Clarity Clinical Documentation (Clarity CD) presents an innovative solution that automates the processing of medical faxes, allowing EHRs to seamlessly route the fax to the correct patient record. In doing so, manual workflows and data entry errors can be avoided. With Clarity CD, unstructured fax documents are transformed into structured, actionable data that can be utilized by EHRs, all in real time. Its proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine enable extraction of key patient demographics, automatically creating a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) for your EHR.

The Clarity CD Advantage

At the heart of Clarity CD lies its ability to improve accuracy and efficiency in handling medical faxes’ embedded data. Clarity CD’s NLP AI engine excels in handling a wide range of documents and images, including low-resolution faxes, ensuring that crucial patient demographic data is extracted and made available for other systems to use. The result? Enhanced productivity, reduced costs, and improved clinical outcomes due to a more significant focus on patient care.

Benefits for Healthcare Providers

Clarity CD was uniquely developed to bring several advantages that cater directly to the needs of healthcare providers:

• Increased Productivity and Efficiency: By minimizing manual workflow steps, Clarity CD frees up valuable time for clinical resources to concentrate on high-priority patient care, boosting overall productivity.
• Enhanced Data Accuracy: The automated process ensures fewer misfiled patient records, leading to improved data accuracy and regulatory compliance in highly regulated areas.
• Faster Response Times: Real-time fax routing allows for quicker access to accurate patient information, resulting in faster response times for patients and improved customer service.
• Streamlined Fax Processing: Clarity CD’s integration into existing workflows streamlines the entire fax processing system, drastically reducing the time it takes to review faxes and lowering the risk of errors.
• NLP AI Precision: Clarity CD’s advanced NLP AI technology identifies multiple patients within a single fax and accurately routes them to the correct patient file, eliminating confusion and potential mix-ups.
• Selective Fax Routing: Non-medical faxes (spam faxes) are automatically directed to a separate fax portal for manual review, ensuring that only relevant and essential information enters your EHR.

Clarity Clinical Documentation™ specifically designed for healthcare providers burdened by the inefficiencies of traditional fax processes. By automating and simplifying clinical documentation fax procedures, Clarity CD empowers providers with accurate, real-time patient information, elevating the standard of patient care and maximizing operational efficiency. With Clarity CD, providers can leave behind the frustrations of manual data entry and reap the benefits of automated data extraction and streamlined clinical documentation processing.

To learn how Clarity Clinical Documentation can simply your fax processes, request a demo here.