Tyler Memorial Hospital Automates Records Management With Captaris Solution

Captaris, Inc. (Nasdaq: CAPA), a leading provider of Business Information Delivery solutions, today announced that Tyler Memorial Hospital, located in Tunkannock, PA, is automating the records management and archival processes for its Health Information Management Systems (HIMS) with Captaris Alchemy Records Manager. The hospital, which serves more than 50,000 patients a year, is expected to cut information delivery times to physicians and hospital staff by up to 50 percent and manage processes for legal compliance and accreditation more efficiently.

"By implementing Alchemy Records Manager for our records management processes, we will be able to tie in departments within the hospital -- like our emergency room and lab systems -- directly with physicians' offices so that patient records are quickly and efficiently updated and retrievable from a variety of different locations. This greatly speeds up our ability to provide the most current patient records to those who need them most for ongoing care and compliance purposes," said Dan Diljak, Tyler's Information Systems manager.

According to state law, patient records must be completed within 30 days. "This was extremely difficult with our former records management processes. Now physicians can dictate patient information directly from their offices. Our medical records coders can then pick up physician information via the Internet and complete final transcriptions for physicians' signatures in less than half the time it took before," said Kathe Bartron, director of Tyler's HIMS.

The hospital looked at several options before deciding on Alchemy Records Manager, including a microfiche solution and software provided by a multi- service corporation that provides physician and insurance services. "None of the options had the functionality, scalability and quality of the Captaris records management solution -- they had no online access, no enterprise-wide application and they weren't user friendly. Not to mention, they were much more expensive," said Diljak.

The Captaris solution also provides a trigger to alert HIMS when records have reached their legal storage time limit. "We were burdened by paper records so this was a big selling point for us," according to Bartron. "We now have the ability to better manage our records archives by being notified when it's time to consider purging unnecessary documents."

An added benefit is the ability for the hospital to manage its policies and procedures manuals online. "With the library feature, we can move forward with new policies and archive the older ones for easy retrieval should we need to refer back in time for legal discovery or other regulatory documentation," added Bartron.

The HIMS is the first area to go live with Alchemy Records Manager. The records management solution will next be implemented within the hospital's Human Resources Department and plans are in process to expand the solution to Accounting and other administrative areas.

About Captaris, Inc.
Captaris Business Information Delivery solutions help organizations of all sizes automate the information and document flow throughout the information lifecycle (capture, process, manage, deliver). With a comprehensive suite of software and services, Captaris helps organizations to grow revenues and increase profits while meeting compliance goals. Through a global distribution network of leading enterprise technology partners, Captaris has installed more than 90,000 systems in 95 countries in companies of all sizes, including the entire Fortune 100.

Captaris Alchemy gives organizations the power to manage and use all of their fixed content -- including images, faxes, email, PDFs, and COLD -- throughout the information lifecycle management (ILM) stages, with an integrated and scalable set of tools that are easy to deploy and even easier to use. Alchemy delivers a complete fixed content management system that can grow with an organization's information management needs, with modules that provide capture, workflow, document management, archiving, records management, integration, retrieval and distribution at a fraction of the cost to acquire and deploy when compared to enterprise content management suites.

Captaris is headquartered in Bellevue, Wash. The company was founded in 1982 and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ National Market under the symbol CAPA. For more information please visit www.captaris.com.