Home Forums Discussions Problems HUGE import files

We are starting (finally) to import items into the chart, but when I try import directly from the hospital web portal using the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer, I get a warning that the file is too big...sometimes when we are scanning in if we don't chose the TIFF file then the file is HUGE and we can't resize it (or I just don't know how...)
If anyone can give me some advice on this that would be great...

And has everyone had pretty good experience with the 3.65 beta version? We need to move to something to get our NPI numbers on there, but I am a little nervous about making this change...

Carol,

When it says it is too big, is it just a warning or will it not allow you?

The import feature will always warn you on any file which is larger than 100Kb. You cam simply choose to ignore it. It is only there so your backups won't get too big. We don't back up our imported files over the net anyway, so it isn't an issue.

3.65 works fine for me. No issues.

I haven't tried to save if we get a warning.
I have tried to save some files that get the resize warning, and I don't get the whole file, only a corner of it. Don't know what makes the difference except file format; tried to redo the resolution but then got really difficult to read copies.
I think I'll have to work with the support folks on this.

When you scan large imports it can make a difference for offsite backup - we use a scanner and set it for high compression black and white and the files are fairly small. You might actually ask your hospital if it would be possible to send as PDF - would use less bandwidth for them, makes them secure - you can't easily download and edit without making the file look altered, etc.

You can save large files - just don't need to. I actually use a scanner and experimented with compression, etc. to find what seems to work for us.

Steven

It shouldn't really matter how big the file is. My guess is you would have to wait awhile with a 100Mb file, but it is only copying the file to a folder in your AC folder. It isn't actually in the database. There is only a link to the file. The warning is there in case users want to back up the import folder, which I think is not a very good idea anyway. I could be wrong though. But, you can copy and paste a 1GB file into the folder yourself just like you can copy and past from your desktop to your My Documents folder. Of course, there wouldn't be a link to the file unless you do it manually in your Imported Items Access database.

These were questions I asked early, and discussed a few times with support. At the time it was recommended that we scan everything in as a TIFF file in order to reduce the size.

I don't know if it matters really what the format it, but I sometimes feel that things are not as clear as they could be (especially the insurance documents).

Other than size, has anyone found that the file format matters as far as legibility? Certainly I think that PDF makes more sense when it comes to sending your files elsewhere. (See thread on coping files).

Rainy,
I'm with you. One of the reasons we haven't moved forward with scanning in hugh amounts of our paper, is because I was wanting some clearer advice and leadership. It would be a shame to waste all that time scanning in all these old files, tests and reports in an incorrect or less than Ideal fashion. My questions are also about HIPAA issues and the "locking-in" of these e documents for saftey sakes. So which is better, TIFF or PDF. PDF sure seems to be a real standard that is catching on, but which of the many fashions is best for security, portability, universality, sharing and all the other possible other reasons to choose one format over another. We users out here shouldn't have to re-invent the wheel every time a new practice or provider joins the AC fold...some well documented instructions and recommendations would be most apperciated....I gather as the folks developing the software they should be on top of a number of the reasons behind these choices....
Paul

I scan to compressed TIFF black&white, resolution 150 dpi. My files are small, for example, 11-page document (progress notes) takes 184kb. May be you scanning your papers in gray format or 300 dpi? I use Photoshop to resize TIFF files scanned in a wrong format. It works fine for 1-page documents, but it is time consuming for multi-page files, because Photoshop doesn't support multi-page TIFF, and you would have to resize each page separately. I prefer to scan in TIFF because of small size. It is easy to convert TIFF to PDF if needed.

Hi. Just some food for thought. It really doesn't matter at all whether you use .PDF or a .tiff file. Yes, a tiff file is relatively smaller than a .PDF, but it is basically the standard.

The limitation of how much you can import or scan is completely dependent on the size of your hard drive. Whether you scan to a folder or import to AC, Amazing Charts databases do not get bigger. We have over 2GBs of data in our ImportItems folder, but the import.mdb database is only 68MBs. So, obviously, we don't backup the Imported Items folder off site, but we do back it up every night with out server backup. A 500GB hard drive will hold approximately 1.2 million .PDFs based on 5 to 15 pages. Sure, a record is much bigger, but you will also scan in labs and consult notes which are a couple of pages.

For those who scan or receive digital .pdfs or any other format, my software programmer has designed a Fax2Files cataloging importing software which has moved from alpha to beta testing. It can be used as a standalone program or with AC. We are looking for Beta testers. It's also nice because it has two paths to the server for redundancy.