Business News

Konica Minolta Helps Florida Heart and Vascular Associates Move to Electronic Filing and Cut Print Costs by 66 Percent

Wednesday 13. October 2010 - Medical Practice Consolidates Digital Imaging Fleet and Adopts Electronic Document Management Practices to Improve Overall Productivity

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta), a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, today announces a successful partnership with Florida Heart and Vascular Associates (Florida Heart) to consolidate its digital imaging fleet with Konica Minolta bizhub C451 and bizhub C353 Color MFPs, and integrate electronic document management solutions across the medical practice. With Konica Minolta’s help, Florida Heart has improved overall productivity, eased HIPAA compliance and realized a 66 percent savings in overall print costs.

Addressing the medical needs of over 100 patients daily, Florida Heart sought the help of Konica Minolta to address inefficiencies in digital imaging practices and address ongoing and increasingly demanding HIPAA regulations. While the office is slowly adopting electronic document management processes and digitizing new medical records, there are still existing paper-based medical records to manage. By moving from a combination of 11 inkjet and laser printers to one Konica Minolta bizhub C451 and three bizhub C353 MFPs, Florida Heart not only condensed multiple vendors and maintenance contracts into a single source provider, but also increased the organization’s electronic filing capabilities. Among the many benefits, Florida Heart has reduced their paper inventory, eliminated the use of external vendors for higher quality printing and most importantly, enabled electronic back-up of existing paper-based records with electronic documentation, saving the practice nearly $600 per month in storage costs.

“While the complete transition to an electronic health records system is still ahead for us, what we have accomplished with Konica Minolta has dramatically improved our operations in terms of cost savings and overall efficiency throughout the practice,” said Chris Patterson, Information Technology Administrator at Florida Heart. “The strength and proven success of the Konica Minolta products and accompanying solutions have enabled us to not only enhance our way of doing business, but also improve how we serve our patients at the end of the day.”

Faxing was a particular area of low productivity for the organization. Florida Heart sends and receives approximately 3,000 faxed pages per week, a common practice in the health care industry. With the bizhub C451 and bizhub C353 MFPs, faxing is now managed directly from the networked devices integrated with Open Text Fax Appliance, FaxPress Edition. Florida Heart can now send multiple faxes without delay and can ensure that there is always an available fax line for inbound correspondence. Via Open Text Fax Appliance, Fax Press Edition, incoming records as well as confirmations for delivered documents arrive as PDF files that are routed to a public folder in Microsoft Outlook where employees have convenient access to view, forward, store and print information, as needed. Konica Minolta’s PageScope Data Administrator Utility has further improved fax efficiencies with a single address book propagated to all the networked bizhubs, eliminating the need for manual input by Users or Administrators at each device.

“Working with Florida Heart on this important initiative is a perfect example of how customers can improve their bottom line by focusing on the technology and opportunities within the printing and digital imaging areas of their business,” said Kevin Kern, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. “The successful results that Florida Heart has realized as a result of this partnership are a true testament to our dedication to directly addressing the needs of customers and ensuring that they can always count on Konica Minolta to meet a broad range of digital imaging needs.”