Hospitals Move to a Remote Coding Solution with iMedX and Kodak Alaris

Executive Summary

Kodak Alaris partnered with iMedX Australia & New Zealand to provide paper-based hospitals with a remote Coding Solution so that Clinical Coding can be conducted off-site. This solution enables hospitals to meet their business continuity planning requirements for hospital staff which the COVID-19 Pandemic forced upon them .

Background

iMedX is a global professional services group supporting healthcare providers manage Clinical Documentation, Analytics and Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). Clinical Coding, as an RCM service, is part of their offering where iMedX professional clinical coders code the relevant documentation for patients. Generally for hospitals with paper-based medical records, these coders must be onsite to access the records and perform their role . This coding process is what allows the healthcare provider to bill the public or private payer.

Current Situation

As a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Public & Private hospitals in Australia were forced to consider the onsite removal of all nonpatient facing staff from the hospital to reduce the risk of virus transmission and to decrease the clinical risk to their patients.. The Coding Service Staff were included in this group – however paper based hospitals were not able to facilitate remote clinical coding.

Subsequently hospital staff suddenly required a means of getting the records Coded remotely, despite not having a scanning or coding solution.

Objective to Successful Partnership

iMedX required a means of providing its customers the ability to easily scan documents and deliver them electronically so that they can be efficiently processed. iMedX are not focused on selling scanner hardware so it was important that Hospitals can leverage their existing document capture devices.

These documents needed to be processed remotely via a dedicated Clinical Coding platform Qualified Clinical Coders. Hospital customers also require this to occur as their revenue is achieved from billing the private and public health system (performed by the iMedX clinical coders).

Solution

iMedX & Kodak Alaris worked collaboratively to provide an end to end solution that supports both onsite scanning and remote coding. The solution was able to be deployed within a 48 hour period from request

Kodak Info Input Solution was presented as a solution to allow iMedX to continue their operations remotely for the Hospitals.

Info Input Solution provides a web portal for which Hospital Administration Staff can scan directly and/or drag and drop files before performing basic indexing and exporting for remote processing by iMedX.

iMedX created iCodeX, a custom built AI overlay solution for performing the Clinical Coding remotely. This software will retrieve the documents scanned with Info Input and create tasks for the iMedX Clinical Coders to perform.

How it works
1. The hospital staff will use the HTML client to access Info Input Solution to connect to any scanner in their network or upload any file directly. This allows hospital staff to capture, index and export the documentation.
2. Info Input automatically and securely transfers the scanned medical records to iCodeX.
3. iMedX Coders are then assigned specific records to code and securely access them via a cloud portal.

iCodeX was developed to provide any hospital wishing to perform off-site coding without having to transport the documents physically.

There may be an opportunity with other healthcare organisations who have a requirement to scan documents on-site to a remote location. In this instance, the opportunity was born out of the COVID19 situation, but this could be a catalyst for implementing these solutions to support healthcare providers business continuity plans to be better prepared for this type of pandemic. Alternatively, this may lead to providers with paper records opting to benefit from outsource clinical coding services before they digitize their records!

Result to Customer

iMedX now has the ability to perform Clinical Coding as a remote service to paper based hospitals in response to the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation and continue to offer remote Clinical Coding as a Service, even after the COVID19 restrictions are lifted.

iMedX can also now provide its customers a scanning solution that does not lock them into a hardware manufacturer and will work with existing infrastructure.

This will allow them to reach a larger potential customer base of hospitals in remote/regional areas that could take advantage of the off-site service not previously available. The current paper-based hospitals utilising iMedX services will also benefit as they can continue to bill the Public and Private health system and maintain cash flow.