Oncdoc,
First of all, I would love to address you by your real name.
In Paperport, after you open a document, on the left hand toolbar there is a rubber stamp icon. Right click it and it will give you the option of pulling in a .bmp signature that you have previously scanned and saved somewhere (preferably the network as you will need to do this on all stations you use). Then you can have this stamp defaulted to each time you click it...very easy.
There is no way I know to selectively allow staff to have access to the documents or what they can do with them. This is where having good staff and good control over them is vital, just as you do when they call in refills or call patients with results, etc. You have to trust that they are doing the right things.
I have a folder in Paperport called "Received Faxes" into which all faxed documents come. NO ONE, except me, moves documents from that folder to another. Staff can look at the documents to see if things have arrived but they cannot convert them to pdf nor mark them up in any way.
After I convert each to pdf and then review them, they go into other folders for action, for importation, or back to the pharmacy. Each staff member has their own Paperport folder and they check it frequently throughout the day. No document gets imported without my stamped signature. If the staff catches one I have not signed, they put it back into a paperport folder called "Physician to sign off". This folder also receives back documents which have been sent to staff for action and then have been acted upon (with documentation of such by the staff person). It also receives all the reports that come in the mail which are scanned. After I review the action (e.g. I asked the patient to be scheduled for MRI and the patient refused to schedule) the document is then sent to the folder "Ready to Import". From there, any staff member can move the document into AC.
I also have sub-folders in the "Ready to Import" folder. These hold the charts that we are in the process of scanning and importing. We scan into Scansnap and then "print" to Paperport, creating folders with the patient's name. Then throughout the day (or I can do it also after hours via Logmein) when anyone has a few minutes they can batch import from Paperport into AC and put the documents into their correct AC folders (of which I have many more than what it defaults to). On one hand it sounds like a very complex system but it really is not. It is pretty intuitive and basically mimics the paper handling system we used before.
Oh, and as far as importing wrong things or into wrong charts...it happens. Sometimes duplicates get imported. The staff simply edits the name of the document in AC to "DUPLICATE" with the subject heading "DELETE". Then when I open that chart and see that I can easily delete it at my convenience.
Sounds like the new AC version may reduce some of this back and forth...looking forward to it!
Leslie
