Client story

Before this, finding a patient’s paperwork was a game of Where’s Waldo.

A small private practice in Beachwood, Ohio that once paid to warehouse its paper charts for the seven or eight years Ohio requires. The piles are gone, and so is most of the overtime that came with them.

Small private practiceBeachwood, OhioPaperless

Nancy Westrich

Managing Partner,
Advantage Diagnostics

+2 more on the record ↓

Jump to a chapter5 chapters

On the record

Three people from one practice, on the piles that used to run it.

The managing partner who watched her staff hunt for paperwork, the IT director who switched off eight servers, and the operations manager who runs the floor now.

The piles

what the paper cost the practice that owned it

1 interview

She and Bill Cech go through the whole paper history in TechTalks Ep. 8.Watch the episode →

Nancy Westrich

Managing Partner

Owns the practice

“I always describe life before AbbaDox as a Where’s Waldo… each pile just got higher and higher and higher as the week would go on. And then finally when the patient would show up, it would kind of be like, well, where’s his paperwork?”

10–12 → 1shredder bags a week, per center

10–12 daysto get genuinely good at the new system

Less overtimebecause the scanning stopped

In the interview: what the paper actually cost a small private practice

The building and the floor

the servers that left, and the shift that replaced the paper

2 interviews

Ran the migration2:03

Bill Cech

Director of IT

“Our other RIS system had eight different servers. So they all had to be on and whirring. We were housing it. So now we’re not housing it. So it’s freed up a lot of our time.”

In the interview: what left the building when the servers did

Jump to a chapter5 chapters

Runs the floor4:57

Tori Zelch

Operations Manager

“Before AbbaDox, we were all paper, so it was very hard to keep track of all the paper and everything that we needed for check-in. With AbbaDox now, we have the tablets that we just hand to our patients.”

In the interview: what a shift looks like from check-in to the reading room

Jump to a chapter7 chapters

The facility

The same floor, without the paper.

Tori Zelch walks the center a year after go-live: the waiting area where patients used to queue with clipboards, the scheduling hub, and the technologist station where the chart, the priors and the questionnaire now open with a click.

Check-intablets, or forms filled in before arrival

ID and insurancescanned straight into the chart

Schedulingorders and clinical notes arriving pre-filled

Reschedulingone click to a new slot

The techswhole chart, priors and questionnaires at the station

“Rescheduling is just a click of a few buttons. Not even a few, just one.”Tori Zelch, at the scheduling hub

7–8 yrs

Ohio requires paper
records to be kept

4–40

pages of paper
per patient

10–12 → 1

shredder bags
a week

01 · Where’s Waldo

The pile got higher every week

Every patient generated paper: anywhere from four pages to forty, depending on the clinical notes an authorization needed. It moved from the pile that needed scheduling to the pile that needed authorizing, and by the time the patient arrived somebody had to find it. Nancy Westrich owns the practice and watched it happen from across the room: the staff saying ‘oh, I saw that’, the drawer it should have been in, the colleague who might have it.

Four to forty pages of paper for a single patient
Charts moved by hand between the scheduling and authorization piles
Paper records warehoused for the seven or eight years Ohio requires
Technologists staying late to scan the day’s paperwork

02 · What left

Eight servers, the scanners, and the late shift

Bill Cech switched off eight on-prem servers his team had been housing, powering and backing up, and stopped driving to the office when a power cut took one of them down. The migration itself ran on HL7 and finished ahead of schedule. They moved the date forward because they were ready. On the floor, patients now arrive to a tablet or with the forms already done, and their ID and insurance card scan straight into the chart.

Eight servers no longer housed, powered or backed up
No more trips to the office after a power failure
HL7 migration completed early, with very limited disruption
Tablets at check-in, or forms completed before arrival

Why it matters

“The vibe of my office got back to the focus of where patient care was important, not the paperwork.”

Nancy Westrich, Managing Partner
Advantage Diagnostics

03 · What it paid for

Office supplies, overtime, and one bag instead of twelve

Nancy names two returns and is careful about both: a dramatic saving on office supplies, which she says she would not mention if it were not significant, and a decrease in overtime because the work fits the day now. The shredding tells the same story from the other end: ten to twelve bags a week became one, and that is one center of two. Volume is up a little too, for the plain reason that patients can be seen sooner.

A dramatic reduction in office supply spend
Less overtime, because the scanning no longer runs past closing
Ten to twelve shredder bags a week down to one, per center
Slightly higher volume, because patients are seen sooner
Staff productive on the new system within ten to twelve days

Before this, finding a patient’s paperwork was a game of Where’s Waldo.