Digital medical record systems should reduce the vast amount of paper that healthcare providers manage, but most won't be paperless anytime soon. Nevertheless, one Texas healthcare system has made significant progress reducing its reliance on paper.

Methodist Healthcare, which operates 23 facilities in Texas, is rolling out e-medical records to all eight of its hospitals, said Geoff Crabtree, senior VP of Methodist Healthcare. The provider has also significantly reduced the time and money spent producing and handling hundreds of different paper forms by outsourcing document management and just-in-time printing needs to Xerox.

Over the last few years, Methodist has cut out the use of hundreds of paper forms, of which millions of copies had to be kept in inventory to ensure that workers had the blank medical, administrative, and other documents needed to inform and treat patients. It did this partly by standardizing and consolidating the number of documents used, including getting rid of multiple versions of the same form.

"It's been a pretty fair reduction, from 1,200 forms down to 300," Crabtree said.

Methodist also digitized many forms and made just-in-time print capabilities available. Medical forms frequently need tweaking, and now changes can be made digitally, rather than duplicating similar forms, Crabtree said.

The onsite print center's nine Xerox support staff manages the more than 25 million printed documents Methodist uses annually. That includes an average of 2 million black-and-white forms that administrative and clinical staff use monthly, and more than 1 million color documents, including brochures. Currently, the print center receives more than 125 job tickets a day and processes about 93% of those in five business days or less.

Large volume printing is done in the print center using a Xerox's iGen3 Digital Production Press, its Nuvera 120 MX Digital Production Systems, and Nuvera 120 EA Digital Production System with book maker. Methodist staff can print out smaller numbers of forms from printers in their work areas, such as at nursing stations. Forms are also bar-coded for more accurate and easier ordering by Methodist staff.

In all, Methodist Healthcare has cut "millions of dollars" from its annual operating costs and freed up facility space formerly used for storing forms for clinical care, Crabtree said. "When we can return space of a facility to clinical space, that's important," he said. "There's also a green aspect, we're eliminating waste by only printing what we need."

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