Paperless doctors' practices are a reality

If you store physical patient files, they are often misfiled, meaning documents vanish and cannot be found again even with an extensive search. This is problematic, particularly when there is a legal requirement to show patients information before an operation, and in case of a patient complaint it can mean extremely high consequent costs due to demands for damages.

Solution scenario of a radiotherapy practice in Singen

The doctors who founded the practice in 2007 have worked towards a paperless practice from the start. A typical BPM solution was selected to control all the procedures in radiotherapy regarding scheduling, legally sufficient archiving and control of radiotherapy treatments. It is used to manage and archive all patients electronically. For a high level of legal certainty and in order to be able to prove the authenticity of documents, the practice uses a solution with electronic signatures and the PDF/A long-term archiving format.

The practice uses pre-configured templates to show information to patients, and these are shown in the Sign Live! application in PDF format. The attending doctor fills these out on convenient Wacom tablet PC's with a special pen and saves them. Sign Live! does not just make it possible to fill out specified fields, but also to add hand-written comments, markings or highlights. The form contains obligatory and optional fields, and plausibility checks are also built in. Sections covering information for patients and consent are an integral part of the questionnaire. The patient confirms his/her approval for treatment with his/her own hand-written signature directly on the screen.  The doctor then signs the entire procedure with the qualified electronic signature of his/her personal signature card. As an additional small intermediate step, the signature process only lasts a brief moment, but it has an enormous influence on compliance.

The basic BPM application and CABAReT, together with Sign Live! and PDF/A Live!, ensure the best possible transparency and legal assurance in the radiotherapy practice.