Dental Chain Taps Captovation for Web-Based Scanning

Published: January 30, 2007

by Alex Woodie

A Wisconsin dental chain will have reason to smile following the implementation of a document and check management system, consisting of software from Captovation, IBM servers, a few dozen thin client workstations, and Fujitsu scanners, that should significantly reduce the amount of paper in its eight offices.

Dental Associates is a growing family dentistry chain serving more than 320,000 patients in central and eastern Wisconsin. Each time one of those patients visits an office, one of the 850 Dental Associates employees must pull his or her file, and new paper is inevitably added to the pile.

Trouble ensues when a patient visits a different office. When this happened (the nerve of those patients!), office workers must photocopy the changes, then hand-deliver, fax, or mail the changes to all the other offices, so they have an up-to-date version of the records. Over time, this system started to show its age, and took its toll on employees, office space, and overall productivity.

Dental Associates decided it needed to reduce the amount of paper it was using, and to provide that "one version of the truth" that is so important to companies these days. Along the way, it also hoped to save money. To that end, the company chose Captovation's Web Capture software, a browser-based document scanning and indexing application. The implementation is being handled by Systems and Programming Solutions (SPSI), a Captovation VAR with two Wisconsin offices.

Employees use Fujitsu model FI-5120C and FI-5530C scanners with Web Capture to scan patient care documents into the system. After scanning, the employees key patient data into preconfigured document index fields. Once indexed, the document images and corresponding data are sent over the network to the Windows-based Captovation Web Capture Server. This server then initiates the archival process into IBM Content Manager, running on an iSeries server. Once archived, authorized employees at any office can query the iSeries and electronically retrieve any patient's information.

Tim Casey, principal of SPSI, says the solution for Dental Associates had to address the need for distributed desktop scanning. "Additionally, the integration to the IBM repository and Web Capture became the ideal capture system for Dental Associates," he says.

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