Have you downloaded and installed FAP yet? Or are you thinking about doing "Imported Items" instead? The nice basic ScanSnap 510 is USB, not networked so just set it up near the computer station you want to use it at. But you can't use it TWAIN with imported items I'm pretty sure, so that is why I mention it.
We have simply set up a folder at the front desk the is "Things to be Scanned". Now our new patients fill out their forms, we still copy their insurance card for the moment (although if we wanted to go in the back, I did a test run and it will scan cards straight up, even thick plastic ones). Sometime during the day while I have time I sit down at the scanner (saving my staff, all one of them, filing time) and scan in whatever has collected over the course of half a day or so. If Nancy has reviewed it already, then I simply import it all the way into FAP (She initials those, so I know right away), if not then I leave it in the Watch Box section, where she knows to look for new stuff and knock 'em out.
Now Shel is no longer a file clerk, Nancy is seeing her to be reviewed stuff semi-immediately and she knows where the most recent stuff is, if I haven't scanned it yet, and the folder never gets to full because I am scanning at least once if not twice a day, so just check the paper FAP to be scanned File or the Watch Box in FAP itself. And we no longer have piles of paper building up every where that need to be handled.
Vinny made an interesting comment about the old paper charts (We only have paper for all the CCHIT others have sent us, Labs, reports and old forwarded charts). How much time and money does it really cost to scan all these old paper charts and how often do you really refer to them? For the moment I am not scanning in the old stuff, but instead just staying up on all that comes in day to day and it is wonderful. I many just let those old paper charts sit and collect dust as long as we don't need the space or the cabinets for something else. They're really not harming anybody or hurting us otherwise, so why waste the time and effort getting them all scanned and shreaded?
I say pick your sysem of choice and just go forward from there. You may tweak it just a bit, but once you find what works for you, you will mever look back. Just like the day you cut off that old schedule book and went green with AC only. You will love it. Point click and there are the papers you used to have to look here, there and every where for... Trust me Leslie, just do it. You can thank Bert later.
Last edited by hockeyref; 06/26/2008 2:31 PM. Reason: Finish a fact, thought