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How Can OCR Improve Healthcare Document Management?

It’s no secret that the healthcare industry is becoming highly reliant on upgrading technologies to increase their process efficiency. In that way, document management process is the heart of healthcare management.

From managing updated medical records to adhering to regulatory standards, healthcare document management is not a walk in the park. As there are many Document Processing Automation challenges in the healthcare sector, what do you think is a long-lasting solution for these problems?

It’s an emerging technology called “OCR”.

After hearing the term “OCR”, is your mind wanting to know,

• What is OCR?
• How OCR Helps Healthcare Document Management?
• And what are the real-time scenarios of applying OCR in Healthcare Document Management process?

If so, then this is a must-read blog for you!

Before diving into the topic, let’s look at the challenges in healthcare document management.

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Common Challenges Faced by Healthcare Industries

Several forms of paperwork and manual documentation are very tedious to maintain. Many patients have indicated that their paper files have been lost more than once. Disarrangement of medical records causes a lag in patient treatment and in the working up of the claims.

Healthcare industries get tons of scanned documents every now and then piled up. Other than the administrative work, the patients also have some files to search from. This activity is repetitive and may result in many inaccuracies.

As people continue to seek medical care within the health care sector, they have great expectations of standards and compliance. People therefore expect healthcare industries to be more effective by increasing their productivity. So, they are constantly in search of a system that reduces the effort required in performing their manual intensive tasks to quickly resolve their challenges.

Now, having known about all the challenges, let’s learn about OCR and it helps in solving all the above challenges.

What is OCR?

OCR, also known as Optical Character Recognition in Document Processing Automation, is a process that converts handwritten documents, and physical documents into machine readable and editable text format. It is an astounding way to store / manage data, reducing paper works, and saving time & effort of manual works.

How OCR Reduces the Workload of Healthcare Sectors?

In the health sector, the use of OCR concerns the integration of outputs obtained from existing patient reports and other appointments. This makes it possible for them to achieve quick returns on the investment in the system.

Healthcare companies can reduce their costs as well as streamline the processes involved in the claiming of healthcare services. OCR technology is beneficial to patients, as they expect faster billing process, who have a health condition that they will be tired of waiting too long. With OCR, healthcare entities can reduce the administration costs by effortlessly managing the processing of medical claims.

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Benefits of OCR in Healthcare Industry

• OCR implementation helps healthcare sectors and medical professionals to enhance their productivity, manage documentation, and improve quality of patient care. As OCR is web-based technology, it can be integrated with different systems.

• OCR technology plays a key role in the effective management of patient information. It is a comprehensive system used in organizing, sorting, communicating and retrieving healthcare records.

• OCR software digitizes the hard copy documents for easy processing, distribution, and securely maintaining the data. Therefore, healthcare sectors can make use of it to seamlessly change hard copies to soft copies.

• As these records are interconnected electronically, OCR in healthcare aids in reducing medical errors. In this way, medical professionals can provide the correct diagnosis and proper dosage of the drug to the patients.

• Besides, OCR technology comes with the feature of different types of images capturing and processing to reduce the manual work burden, which is nontechnical. Thereby, the efforts of medical experts like radiologists can be geared towards other high priority tasks.

How does OCR work?

Here is the four step process on how OCR works:

1. Document Scanning

The first step is digitizing the paper documents into digitalized format. The OCR software considers the light portions of the scanned images and considers the dark portions of images as text.

2. Preprocessing

The OCR software aligns the images properly by straightening or tilting the scanned documents in correct format that occurred then it removes unwanted spaces or any digital image spots, aligning the borders of text images.

3. Recognizing Text

After the pre-processing, it recognizes the text or numeric values from printed text.

4. Postprocessing

The OCR software converts the unstructured data into searchable and editable format for further processing.

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OCR’s Range of Applications in Healthcare

1. Patient Intake and Registration

Scenario:

When a new patient visits a hospital, he/she fills out a paper registration form. It includes details such as personal information, medical history, and insurance information.

OCR Application:

The completed form is scanned, and OCR technology extracts key information like name, date of birth, medical conditions, and insurance details. Now, the patient data is then automatically entered into the hospital’s Electronic Health Record system, streamlining the registration process.

2. Medical Chart Digitization

Scenario:

A hospital has numerous paper-based medical charts for its patients, including handwritten notes from doctors and nurses.

OCR Application:

These paper records are scanned, and OCR converts these handwritten notes and printed text into digital format record. This helpshealthcare providers to access patient information instantly through the hospital’s electronic system.

3. Insurance Claim Processing

Scenario:
A patient submits an insurance claim form with handwritten details about the medical service received and costs incurred.

OCR Application:
The claim form is scanned, and OCR extracts relevant data such as patient details, service codes, and amounts. The extracted data is then used to automate the claim processing and submission to the insurance company.

4. Prescription Management

Scenario:
A doctor provides a hand-written, which has to be processed by the pharmacy.

OCR Application:
The handwritten prescription is scanned and converted into digital text using OCR. The pharmacy’s system then verifies and processes the prescription, reducing errors and improving efficiency.

5. Lab Report Integration

Scenario:

A medical laboratory generates printed reports for various tests, which need to be entered into the patient’s electronic health record.

OCR Application:

The printed lab reports are scanned, and OCR technology extracts test results, patient identifiers, and dates. This data is automatically imported into the patient’s electronic health record for easy review by healthcare providers.

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What Next?

Saying that OCR for Healthcare Industry is a worthwhile investment would be a massive understatement. As you’ve read about the benefits, and the applications of OCR technology, you would have gained enough insights about the importance of OCR in the limelight of AI.

The way to success with OCR for your healthcare business is finding the right AI Based OCR solution. Fortunately, AI-Powered Automation Solution Provider like iSQUARE significantly acts as a helping hand in your document automation journey.

Ready to get started with this transformative leap? Scheduling a Demo with us is just a click away!