One patient generates an enormous amount of paperwork -- from patient forms and insurance cards to physician notes, lab results and billing/payment information. And let‘s not forget the very important HIPAA compliance documents.

With so many forms, it’s no wonder most doctors’ offices are in danger of bursting at the seams. That doesn’t include all the time spent copying, filing and managing all that paper. However, there are effective ways to manage such paper overload.

Online document management services, such as eCast’s DocManager, allow all those documents to be safely stored away, but still available with a few keystrokes.  They offer a way to scan, upload, and organize paper documents in a secure, HIPAA-compliant manner. DocManager is a web-based solution that supports most file formats, so it is possible to upload images, PDF and Word documents.

Once the files are uploaded, they are store in a centralized repository. For a monthly fee, practices get access for three users, 1 gigabyte of shared space and a file cabinet (a virtual file cabinet, but it lets users create and manage folders like a real filing cabinet). The monthly fee also includes unlimited folders, access from virtually anywhere and 24/7 support. It is also possible to buy additional amounts of storage for an extra fee.

In addition to the benefits of less paper, DocManager offers full text-search capability. Using powerful OCR search capabilities, it lets users search for content, metadata and tags in every stored document including PDF and images. DocManager includes document management tools, which allow users to track who checked-out a file and it can tracks revisions to the file. That makes it easy to track both changes and user activity. In addition, its administrators can assign users and limit access levels and the data is encrypted for use over secure networks.