In order to serve a growing client base and fulfill strict record retention guidelines, Bayou Pathology implemented a paperless document imaging system that interfaces with their practice management system. As a result, Bayou Pathology has improved customer service, streamlined workflow, and increased staff productivity. That solution, a combination of Companion Technologies’ Practice Management application and Optical Image Technology (OIT), Inc.’s DocFinity® software suite, has resulted in a nearly paperless office and has almost paid for itself within one year.

An accumulation of paper

Bayou Pathology, an independent anatomic pathology laboratory based in West Monroe, Louisiana, processes and diagnoses specimens for doctors. The lab serves fifteen rural and urban hospitals, as well as approximately three hundred physicians’ offices within a tri-state area, and has been in business since 1976. As the practice has grown, so too has the volume of paper kept on file. “Although our staff is relatively small—five pathologists with a support staff of twenty— the nature of the work results in a tremendous amount of paper and a constant influx of additional patient-related documentation,” said Rubette Hebert, Business Office Manager at Bayou. Compounding this situation were regulations stipulating that billing and payment records must be kept for seven to ten years. At Bayou Pathology, the net results were strains on its staff due to the time and effort that it took to locate paper records, which were sometimes buried, lost, misplaced, or duplicated.

Anyone who has worked in an underwriting office understands the challenges of managing files, processing underwriting documents efficiently, keeping track of agents and clients on the move, and making sure customers are happy. Unitrin Direct, based in Chicago, Illinois and with offices in multiple states, recently made these processes easier by integrating diverse technologies and leveraging their effectiveness to offer faster and better service. Their vision and success resulted in the company receiving the Insurance Accounting and Systems Association (IASA) Technology Achievement Award in 2007. This was merely the beginning of what Unitrin Direct plans to accomplish as they enhance services to their customers.

Unitrin Direct, an insurer that sells direct-to-consumer automobile and homeowners insurance in 25 states, is a rapidly expanding company that conducts its business over the Web, by telephone and by using tools such as strategic partner sites to gain new business. Initially, management had a vision to expedite services by automating the processing of returned mail, incomplete customer submissions, and pursuit of signatures that were required on underwriting documents. By integrating digital workflow with their third-party automated call system, policy management software, third-party capture and indexing provider, claims management system, and data review criteria stored on their Web page, the company aimed to leverage the value of each of these technologies and do more work, faster. This increased efficiency has enabled the company to continue to grow without adding staff, and it has positioned Unitrin Direct to handle future growth effectively.

Palm Beach State College serves approximately 47,000 students in one of the largest counties in Florida. Composed of four campuses, Palm Beach State receives approximately 20,000 applications per year— usually between 12,000 and 15,000 during their main semester.

Like most colleges, Palm Beach State had concerns about disaster recovery. Indeed, the College had legitimate cause for anxiety. Palm Beach State is located within the Florida hurricane zone, and the 2005 hurricane season had been particularly destructive. In early 2006, after two failed attempts at implementing an electronic document management (EDM) system, all of the institution’s critical documents were still paper-based.

Chuck Zettler, Director of Information Technology Project Management at the college explains, “We were intent upon finding an EDM system that suited all of our needs. Disaster recovery was a driving factor, as was a need for space and for improved efficiency.”

Palm Beach State hired a consultant and built a business plan. As part of that process, they discovered other pressing issues that could be improved with an EDM system. As Zettler describes, “Our infrastructure is an urban, multi-campus environment. Students must travel across different sites, and procedures were often constrained by the limitations of paper. Staff would have to make numerous phone calls and send faxes in order to verify student information. There was a need for staff to access information from Web browsers, and a need for simultaneous access to information.

“After evaluating our business processes, we determined that we also had a need for workflow. Students are our number one priority, and we wanted to implement measures to serve them more efficiently, with faster turnaround time. It can take up to an hour to travel from one campus to another; paper processes made work distribution extremely inefficient. Workflow would give us the ability to distribute work to staff across the multi-campus environment with the click of a mouse.”