New Scanner
Reading the title of this post is less than exciting, huh? Well it’s exciting for me. Yesterday, we installed a new scanner in the office – a Fujitsu fi6010N SnapScan. This machine is a REAL scanner, not a copier or a printer that can do “it all” (multi-function).
Why is this machine so important you say – well first and foremost it does that job it is designed to do. It is fast, efficient, does not jam and provides us the “right tool for the job.”
In December 2008, Dr. Allen purchased the endodontic specialty office of Joseph S. Dovgan, D.S.S., M.S. in Paradise Valley, AZ. Dr. Dovgan literally had thousands of paper charts in the office which were accumulated over 20 years in practice. Dr. Allen’s endodontic specialty office in Phoenix has been paperless since 2005, so needless to say we had to have a solution for all of this paper.
For continutiy sake, it is nice to have old records available when a patient you may have treated, say 10 years ago makes a new appointment in your office. With endodontics, most of the time it is a “one shot deal” – that is most patients don’t come back for another root canal unless they have to. So scanning an old chart, along with radiographs and converting it to your electronic chart is the way to go.
Being paperless, we have always made scanners a big part of the office equipment at our locations. Every admin “desk” had a scanner along with a network scanner for large files. The issue was that all of these machines were either designed for single pages or were converted copiers and would jam when presented with a large scanning joh.
Dr. Dovgan’s charts were quite comprehensive and certainly not noted for their brevity. The new Fujitsu scanner is a great solution to our large chart issue. I have set a goal to have all of the paper charts in our office scanned by the end of September of this year.
Ok Kevin, you are a technology geek – so what. How does that help your office provide better root canals? I can tell you that I hired our staff to provide superb patient care, not to scan files. The less time they spend pushing buttons in front of an office machine, the more time they have to interact with our referring doctors and our patients.
Time and money well spent if you ask me!
KC
