Cutting the Cost of Capture

by Ralph Gammon

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Because the anthrax crisis was short lived, the BLS was never forced to migrate entirely to fax, but Curran estimates that 25 percent of PPI surveys are now received that way. "We plan to ramp up very soon to as much as the market will bear," he says. "I don't expect we will ever get 100 percent of the surveys faxed in, but I estimate it will be more than 80 percent."

BLS spent less than $200,000 for its fax server implementation. Curran doesn't have any numbers on the cost savings of the paper-free approach, but he says, "I guarantee the savings would be considerable," adding that the fax server can also be used to deliver surveys to participants. "We'll be saving on postage [and mail handling] both for sending surveys out and for their return because we also cover the return postage."

In the event of future business interruptions at BLS headquarters, Curran says that the fax infrastructure gives the agency a measure of business continuity insurance. "If something happens in our building, we have a back-up server in Atlanta," he explains. "It's a lot easier to duplicate a faxed-based infrastructure than a mail-based one."

Ralph Gammon is editor of the Document Imaging Report, a monthly newsletter (www.documentimagingreport.com).

Distributed Capture Cuts Cost, Improves Service

It seems most document imaging vendors now support the idea of distributing capture to the source of the paper. This includes scanner vendors flooding the market with low-volume scanners, digital copier vendors pushing scan-to-email capabilities and capture software vendors creating Web-based applications to enable distributed capture.

What are the benefits of distributed capture? Sometimes it's a matter of cutting costs by eliminating the expense of shipping documents to centralized imaging facilities. Other times there's also an opportunity to improve service by speeding up business processes that begin with the receipt of an image. Many times, customers discover both lower costs and improved service.

Title Policies Without the Search

Houston-based Stewart Title Guaranty, for example, is planning a distributed capture network that is designed to improve service to the 6,600 agents who issue the company's title insurance policies.

"We're creating a searchable, centralized repository of title policies issued by Stewart agents," explains Elana Yonko, product specialist for Landata Systems, the integration arm of Stewart Title Guaranty. "The repository is available in 25 states, and we view it as a great asset for Stewart agents and a competitive advantage for our company."

In late 2002, Stewart launched a pilot project in which two of their largest agents scanned their policy documents directly into the company's central imaging system. The software used was TaskMaster WebExpress distributed capture software from Datacap, Rye, NY.

"The TaskMaster application can be used to generate an XML file for indexing the images," says Yonko. "This reduces the time it takes to load the policy document images into the central repository and makes them available quickly to Stewart agents."

Ironically, Stewart originally chose TaskMaster's WebExpress as an upgrade for its centralized scanning operation. "We felt leveraging TaskMaster's Web interface made more sense than installing 20 thick-client seats," Yonko explains. "Also, it cost half as much for a Web-based capture application than we would have paid for a thick-client implementation."

During its pilot, Stewart has encountered some issues with one of its Internet connections. "Because the connection involves multiple bounces, we are running into problems with time-outs," says Yonko. "Once we resolve those problems, we will have a good idea of our process flow."

Ideally, Yonko says, Stewart wants to offer distributed capture to all of its issuing agents, but they'll have to express an interest in using it. "We are looking at this as a long-term project," she concludes.

Rapid Admissions for Patient Records

Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in downtown Chicago is using distributed capture to support a 10-fold increase in the number of documents it's scanning — all without increasing the number of dedicated scanning personnel.

According to Scott Halper, senior network manager, revenue systems, imaging first proved itself in the hospital's emergency room admissions office. "The ER involved maybe 120 patients per day with an average of 18 to 20 documents per patient," says Halper. "Now, we are scanning documentation for every person that checks into the hospital. That can be several hundred patients per day. With new paperwork, such as HIPAA forms, we are scanning at least five pages per patient."

Rush-Presbyterian has deployed a distributed capture application from Minneapolis-based Captovation, and an optional barcode recognition module is being used to automatically index the images based on information stored in the hospital's patient database. The distributed application has enabled the hospital to move most of the scanning from six scanners at general collection points to 60 scanners at the hospital's registration points.

"Distributed scanning has helped us overcome the growing pains caused by increasing our volume of images," says Halper. "It has also improved the speed with which documents are made available online. Formerly, the documents at each collection point may have only been processed twice per day. Now, [documents are scanned and] available almost as soon as a patient checks in."

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