“Fax machines are archaic.”
Timothy Wintz, RT, R, MR, ARRT, is the Director of MRI at New York Imaging Specialists (NYIS), and he is committed to white-glove service for patients. Technology from the 1980s doesn’t fit his vision of what patients should expect from a healthcare provider.
“We proactively secure information before the patient even arrives at our facility,” he said. “We know their demographics for insurance and why they are seeking care. We know exactly what their physician wants from the exam. We’ve clarified everything we need to know about the order. We have secured any prior authorizations needed. This is before the patient walks in the door.”
Accomplishing all of that via fax would take days and reams of paper. With ScriptSender, NYIS handles it all in minutes. “Our patients don’t have to remember what the doctor ordered or shoulder the burden of bringing paperwork to our front desk. Having the right information upfront is probably the number one part of our patient experience.”
ScriptSender enables secure, instant communication with referring providers—with no installs, no downloads, and no complex interfaces. Referrers click once in their own EHR (or any application) to send any document, such as referrals, insurance information, or clinical notes directly to NYIS.
“We can get our referring physicians set up and sending to us in minutes—with no HL7 and no expensive I.T. help necessary.”
— Timothy Wintz
Director of MRI, NY Imaging
Creating Shareable Data
Information is transmitted as live data, not a pdf or image file. “There is always this aha moment when customers realize we aren’t just a pdf printer that allows a referring physician to print a referral to them,” said Chris Craft, CEO of ScriptSender. “We actually capture the real postscript data from that print and insert the data directly into their system. It is far more than fax replacement. It is information sharing, interoperability, integration in seconds—with any EMR, RIS, or PACS.”
Digitizing the data ensures consistent information is used across any workflow or third-party application in the practice, such as insurance verification, clinical decision support, or prior authorization. “This isn’t another electronic fax tool,” said Wintz. “Those systems are not made for clinical settings.” Notes, lab reports, an entire patient folder, anything can be securely transmitted directly to NYIS in seconds.
A Growing Referrer Base
NYIS sought out the ScriptSender solution when its referrer base started to grow. Part of a larger oncology and hematology center called New York Cancer and Blood Specialists, the imaging practice was born out of a need to provide PET-CT services in-house. When its reputation for providing quality imaging began to spread, physicians outside of the practice started to refer patients there.
“The question became—how do we ingest these orders?” said Wintz. “How do we take in external referrals in a timely manner, not only to complete the patient scan but also to make sure everything is accurate and that the patient experience is preserved? Because this isn’t just ten orders. We’re doing 1300-1400 orders a week.”
Data may be accurate, complete, and digital in one practice, but when collaboration with other clinicians is required, the data has to be shareable and secure. The standard solution—building a technology bridge between platforms, like HL7 or a VPN, is expensive and time-consuming. “Not every referring physician has the resources to build out an HL7 connection. What everyone can do is print,” Wintz explained. “ScriptSender was the ideal solution for us.”
The ScriptSender team was ready to help NYIS’ referring community. “We went to referrers that were willing to adopt this new method of faster and more reliable collaboration,” Wintz said. “Some referrers don’t have a dedicated I.T. team, but everyone has the ability to print. The ScriptSender professionals were all-in. They helped with set-up and were able to get our referrers up-and-running in minutes. The speed with which we can acquire information from our ScriptSender-enabled referrers is just so much faster. If we need a change order, for example, it’s so much simpler.”
Referring providers look for quality imaging and fast turnaround times, and ScriptSender enables NYIS to go even further. More accurate collaboration, more immediate data access, more convenience for patients—these are the differentiators that support referral retention.
How Does ScriptSender Work?
Integration made easy.
Referring providers use a virtual printer, activated with a simple point-and-click in a web browser, to transmit to your ScriptSender server. It’s as simple as a print command—and that’s any document, from any medical group, using any EMR. ScriptSender leverages a driver native to Microsoft Windows—no installs, downloads or costs to your customer.
Routing to your ScriptSender server is secure, using industry-standard encryption technologies.
Freedom for the Front Desk
With a growing practice, not to mention high standards for patient care, the scheduling team at NYIS has to function seamlessly. Faxing forces highly skilled professionals to spend their time filing papers, and it significantly degrades collaboration and, by extension, patient care. Fax workflows, whether electronic fax or not, still rely on manual data entry. With ScriptSender, inefficient workflows can now be fully automated with improved reliability.
“Faxes don’t always come through, and there are toner issues, and machines stop working,” Wintz explained. “With ScriptSender, our scheduling team is highly efficient. With everything digitized, we can track each order. We can see which order came through and whether it’s been scheduled. We can see which orders are completed. It helps the organization of the whole practice.”
ScriptSender Features
Most industries have long moved on from relying on fax machines. Physicians’ offices are still inundated with printouts, blank pages, and illegible handwriting. That’s if the fax goes to the right number in the first place. NYIS is one of a growing number of healthcare providers that knows it doesn’t have to be this way. They are modernizing clinical collaboration and patient care, and ScriptSender is a key part of their success.
Interested in learning more?
Schedule a demo and take ScriptSender for a spin.