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Vendors of document imaging services say increased automation brings challenges, but also opportunities.
Twenty-five years ago, Jeffrey Gilb got into the document imaging business despite being warned it might not be a good career move. "I was told paper checks were going away," recalls Gilb, president and CEO of Parascript LLC, Boulder, Colo. "But the reports of paper's death were premature. How many printers did Hewlett-Packard sell last year?"
Gilb and leaders of other document imaging companies serving the health care industry see providers and payers moving toward further automation of paper-based processes as a result of more widespread use of electronic medical records and other information technology. That means imaging vendors must adapt to a changing business climate-but it doesn't mean paper is going away anytime soon, Gilb says. "I see a mingling of paper and electronic data for a long time. Paper may go away in my son's lifetime, but not in mine."
For now, document imaging remains a field of opportunity because implementation of full, enterprisewide electronic records systems remains in the early stages, says Jeff Amrein, CEO of Applied Imaging Concepts, the document imaging subsidiary of Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc., Libertyville, Ill.
Consequently, document imaging-which for many years has been viewed as a stepping stone toward electronic medical records-will continue to be in strong demand for quite some time, vendor executives contend. But at some point, the document imaging opportunities in health care will start to dwindle, says A.J. Hyland, president and CEO of Hyland Software Inc., Westlake, Ohio.
"Most imaging vendors will admit that their imaging services will play a diminished role in the future, but I doubt they'd say the market will completely disappear," he adds. "My view is that it will gradually, but significantly, decrease over the next 10 to 15 years."
But there always will be some amount of paper, such as customer correspondence, in health care that will require document imaging to turn it...