IRVING, TX – VHA Inc., the national health care network, has enhanced its existing document management program to support hospitals' efforts to streamline their administrative and clinical activities and progress toward an environment that will adopt electronic health records.

Health care organizations rely heavily on a wide range of documents to support quality patient care and conduct daily operations, but many have difficulty understanding the total cost of their document management expenses. To help members improve their grasp of their spending in this area, VHA has launched a new education campaign providing health care organizations with information on various alternative document management solutions that can quickly enhance sustainability initiatives, reduce document management costs and improve operational efficiencies, resulting in increased cash flow. 

"Establishing a strategic approach to document management is critical for maximizing a health care organization's staff and resources, successfully implementing electronic health records, minimizing risks and improving cash flow," said Nik Fincher, VHA's vice president of Purchased Services and Capital Equipment Solutions teams. "Whether you are an integrated delivery system, a stand-alone community hospital, a physician practice or another type of non-acute care organization, VHA offers members outstanding value through contracts with the industry's leading document management service providers." 

Diane Waters, purchasing manager at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, Greenville, N.C., said, "VHA helped us to link with Xerox, who improved the quality and efficiency of our print center's services and expanded our document management capabilities, reducing our costs by $220,000 over the previous year." 

David Stewart, Xerox employee and full-time print shop manager at Pitt County Memorial, added, "We now serve as a shared resource for Pitt County Memorial's six sister hospitals while improving turnaround time, providing additional capabilities and reducing costs across the system."

According to Jennifer Busby, director of health information management at Maury Regional Medical Center, Columbia, Tenn., "Working with VHA's contracted supplier, EDCO Group, has allowed our organization to focus on the electronic medical record transition by freeing up time previously spent physically locating, retrieving, processing and returning paper medical records." Because of those efforts, Maury Regional now saves $105,000 annually from newly leasable office space that was previously used to store files, and $24,000 annually from reduced labor costs. The Health Information Management department also decreased its previous 24-hour coverage to 11.5 hours.

As part of this service solution, VHA provides hospitals and non-acute care facilities with savings opportunities on a broad range of value-added services that help streamline operations, improve staff efficiency, reduce overall costs and assist with HIPAA compliance. For more information on VHA's contracts and services please visit www.vha.com