OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Just a week ago, Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, GA became the latest victim of a major data breach involving protected health information (PHI). The health network announced it was unable to locate 10 computer discs containing PHI for more than 300,000 patients treated between 1990 and 2007.

According to a local news article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Emory President and CEO John Fox admitted that the discs had not been properly stored. Although they were in an office with restricted access and nightly lockdown, the cabinet they were in was not locked.

We can hope that the discs were simply misplaced rather than stolen or destroyed, but incidents like this still occur far too often in the healthcare industry. At risk is not only the privacy of the patients whose health information could now be anywhere, but also Emory itself, because it is bound by strict regulatory mandates like HIPAA and HITECH. Non-compliance can result in crippling fines and a loss of public confidence. Emory has already committed to providing identity theft resources to all of the affected patients.

This latest breach comes just six months after an internal breach in which an employee perhaps unwittingly printed medical records that eventually found their way to an identity theft ring. Nine of 32 affected patients reported that their identities had been stolen, and Emory alerted another 7,200 patients who had been in their care at the time. All told, industry analysts calculate the average cost per breached document at $240. Though the employee was let go, Emory spokesperson Lance Skelly said the printed documents were within the scope of the employee’s job duties. In other words, the paper was the problem. To see how OpenText helps medical facilities of all sizes tackle this issue, watch last month’s webcast with TMCnet.

While many healthcare providers are making great strides in effectively managing today’s patient information, how many of them are effectively evaluating the risk associated with “misplacing” historic documents that fall outside the scope of their EMR deployment? For many organizations, it’s unlikely that their next data breach will result from a virus or a group of teenage hackers. The real threat may simply come from the theft of unattended paper documents or an overzealous cleaner diligently “cleaning up.”

OpenText has a solution designed for problems exactly like this. Alchemy, our document server solution, can capture document images from paper or just about any electronic file format, file them or route them to specific users, and track every instance of access: where, when, and who sees them. Had the files on those discs or the leaked paper medical records been scanned into Alchemy, the physical media could have been safely destroyed and Emory would be in the clear.

Click here to check out Alchemy’s latest release, version 9.0.

Tens of thousands of businesses around the world already use OpenText’s Alchemy Server to manage their critical documents. On April 18, 2012 new features in the areas of capture, access, workflow and retention were released as Alchemy 9.0. See the full press release here.

Alchemy 9.0 is a simple solution for managing documents. Any business that relies on thorough and precise tracking of records will benefit from Alchemy’s unique capabilities. Here are a few of them:

• Alchemy 9.0 captures and archives paper or electronic documents from MFP, desktop, back-office and third-party applications.

• All of your documents reside in a single, centralized database.

• Full-text search allows “Google-style” search of all documents just by plugging in a word or phrase.

• Alchemy 9.0 helps you create simple workflows so documents are automatically routed to the correct decision-makers depending on their status (e.g. “accepted” or “rejected”).

• Retention utilities let you manage the lifecycle of your documents from creation to deletion based on any criteria you choose (e.g. you can tell Alchemy to delete certain records days, weeks, months or years after a chosen event).

Immediate benefits include reduced payroll burn from manual document management like faxing and filing; reduction of paper and paper-related supplies; less hardware and maintenance on MFPs and fax machines; and audit-readiness for less risk of compliance failure.

Alchemy is particularly useful for small- to medium-sized businesses with an internal or mandated need for secure document management. Healthcare, legal, financial and manufacturing institutions in particular face severe fines for improper, inaccurate or incomplete document access and management.

We are very excited about this release and the enhanced capabilities of Alchemy 9.0, and you should be too!

Check us out at http://getdocumentmanagement.com or to view more fax and document solutions, see OpenText’s full suite at http://faxsolutions.opentext.com.

Darren Boynton
Product Marketing Manager
OpenText Corporation

Visit OpenText at HIMSS12 – the largest annual healthcare IT conference and exhibit in the US. Over 20 current and former OpenText staff (including our former and recently retired CEO John Shackleton) will be on hand to showcase our company’s full line of healthcare solutions spanning healthcare records management to secure private health information exchange.

Stop by booth# 2474 at any time to view product demonstrations or to speak with OpenText healthcare experts. We encourage attendees to learn about our solutions and discover how they have helped thousands of healthcare organizations capture and streamline their paper-based clinical and business processes, manage compliance, mitigate risk and enhance delivery of services. If you’d like to schedule an appointment with us during HIMSS12, click here!

To learn more about OpenText healthcare solutions, visit our new healthcare microsite.

OpenText at HIMSS12 (Booth# 2474)
Venetian Sands Expo Center, Las Vegas
Exhibition Dates: Feb. 21 – 24, 2012

• Tuesday, February 21 – 1:00pm -6:00pm
• Wednesday, February 22 – 9:30am-1:00pm & 2:30pm-6:00pm
• Thursday, February 23—9:30am-1:00pm &2:30pm-6:00pm

Get Social at HIMSS12
Make sure you follow us on Twitter (our handle is @faxsolutions) and join the conversation using #HIMSS12 hashtag.

As much as it appears that the information we create, receive and use is becoming prevalently digital, I still seem to be getting an overwhelming amount of post pushed through my letterbox each morning. Of the mail I receive, 60% is unwanted, 35% comes from the same providers I signed up with online (with new offers to help me increase those bills even further) and then there are the postcards from Grandparents and an occasional copy of Wired magazine.

Aside from the needless destruction of our planet’s natural resources, there is also the issue of content responsibility. In many cases, the unwanted mail I receive contains information which collectively provides more data about me than I am comfortable sharing with the neighbor across the road who can be frequently found going through my trash looking for cans to recycle (there is a whole other blog article there). All this means that I spend far more time than I should, vetting my mail to determine what should be kept, what should be recycled and most importantly, what should be shredded. As frustrating as this may be, what happens when it’s not simply a family of three dealing with their mail but a company of fifty or five hundred employees drowning in documents from countless sources?
 
Do you have enough information on your information? 

Image Credit: Seth Anderson

Organizations have to not only contend with incoming mail but also all the information that is generated within the company; financial transactions, HR files, out bound customer correspondence, legal agreements, the list is endless.

And while businesses will be equally sensitive about the sanitization of company documents they are (or should be) more concerned again with the accountability and responsibility that comes with holding on to that information. In many cases, transactional and/or confidential documents need to be kept for prescribed periods of time and then destroyed according to a rigid schedule. If your business is impacted by MoReq, HIPAA, 21 CFR Part 11, Sec 17a, DoD 5015.2, UCC, Sarbanes-Oxley, UETA, ANSI, NARA, ISO 15489, VERS or FRCP then you are already aware of these significant challenges. If you are lucky enough to have made it through that list unscathed, there will likely be local, regional or national mandates on the usage, storage and disposition of specific types of documents. And lastly, there are your own internal policies that dictate how particular kinds of information need to be managed.
 
Getting Document Retention Right

If you have been researching this subject you will know that there is lot of information out there that discusses the setting up of retention and disposition plans which (when correctly deployed) do a reasonable job of managing the overall document lifecycle. What a lot of these approaches lack however, is a focus on the very beginning of the document lifecycle. The criteria for document destruction are often based on assessing the characteristics of each document. This means that the success of your retention plan is entirely based on the metadata collected about the document at the time it was indexed. This becomes particularly important when dealing with documents that rarely touched once they are captured. If your indexing process lacks accuracy or, you fail to capture the right data, your retention solution will never be the right solution. Also consider how retention requirements have changed over the last ten years. If past behavior is indicative of future behavior then expect to see increasingly stringent regulations going forward. Prepare for it now by setting up a comprehensive capture strategy rather than a “get-by” approach.

Image Credit: Gerwin Sturm

Most importantly, ensure that your solution for document retention is transparent and understandable by normal human beings.  It’s very easy to find your organization flying down an over-zealous formal records management rabbit hole. This might make for a great insurance policy on paper but will likely struggle to work as a solution that can move and bend as the business and external regulations evolve.

Suddenly those six Pottery Barn catalogs and fourteen credit card offers seem less of a burden…

With the desire for the highest quality of patient care in the forefront, healthcare organizations, like yours, are facing many challenges when it comes to secure document delivery and storage. We’ve realized regardless of your size, organizations are looking to technology to reduce cost, safeguard information, maintain the ever-changing regulatory requirements and improve internal workflow processes.

Healthcare IT News wants to know: What are your biggest challenges for developing a centralized digital document delivery strategy that complies with healthcare industry regulations?

Please take part in this five-minute survey, and as a thank you you’ll receive a complimentary copy of the research report that will be published based on your answers.

For over 25 years, Price Brothers (UK) Ltd has been part of the Great Man-Made River water supply project in Libya, a project set up to bring fresh water from deep under the Sahara Desert to coastal towns and cities. They were responsible for the original design of this 1600km underground network of pipes and aqueducts, which is recognised as being the largest of its type in the world.

During this time, Price Bothers amassed a huge library of documents. Current project documentation alone is estimated to be three quarters of a million paper documents – a mixture of drawings, plans and critical correspondence.

Using OpenText Alchemy, a document management solution, ProcessFlows partner Castle Document Management provided an electronic filing cabinet for Price Brothers which exactly replicates and retains their manual filing system.

Searching for information and drawings is now a quick and easy desktop function. Documents can be retrieved and viewed from the CDs at the click of a button and office space taken up by large filing cabinets has been reclaimed, as there is no longer a need to retain the paper documents.

Having dealt with current project documentation, Castle Document Management is continuing to work with Price Brothers to electronically archive older information. Once the process has been completed and everything is in electronic format, backed-up and secure, the paper will be securely destroyed, in line with compliance regulations. There is also the option for Castle Document Management to host the Alchemy repository. Users would then be able to access their documents from any web enabled device. Either way, there is no need for a dedicated document storage server.

Read the entire Price Brothers case study here for more information.

At the recent Global Fax Summit, OpenText customers and partners gathered to learn the latest on all things related to enterprise fax management.  At this conference, I was reminded of our global reach and how our partners help solve major business problems with their expertise and a solid set of document management products. The meeting represented something of a celebration for the OpenText Fax and Document Distribution Group as this year marks a major milestone for RightFax since its start 25 years ago. 

Matthew Brine, Vice President of the OpenText Fax and Document Distribution Group states, “The Global Fax Summit allows us to connect with our partners and customers and provides an opportunity for us to express how important they are to our continued success.”

So hats off to our award-winning partners that were recognized for their achievements during the Global Fax Summit. Keep up the good work.

Top Reseller FY11 North America: Advantage Technologies

Largest % Growth FY11 North America: Ingenium Software LLC

Top Reseller FY11 Latin America: Telemikro Ltd

Largest % Growth FY11 Latin America: Redcom, Inc

Top Reseller FY11 Europe : Avanquest UK Limited

Largest % Growth FY11 Europe: Metastore

Top Reseller FY11 MEA: Vox AmVia Pty Ltd

Largest % Growth FY11 MEA: SquareOne Technologies

Top Reseller FY11 Asia/Japan: Macnica Networks Corp.

Largest % Growth FY11 Asia/Japan: Jebsen & Jessen Communications

Top Reseller FY11 Australia/New Zealand: Axient Pty Ltd

Largest % Growth FY11 Australia/New Zealand: Axient Pty Ltd

Imagine, you just started a new job and your first task is to locate ten years of accounting records from your department. At this point, you are convinced this task falls under the category of cruel and unusual punishment – records are missing, older records are off-site and no sane method of categorizing or indexing can be detected. For an organization undergoing an audit, this can be a painful lesson in compliance and best practice in which no one escapes.

If your organization happens to be a law firm, you are forced to play by a different set of “retention” rules – some documents must be kept for a few years whereas documents related to wills and estates may need to be kept for more than 100 years. Legal firms are often asked to produce financial and billing information long after a case is closed. This equates to an unfathomable amount of paper that must be filed, stored, and easily accessed by legal staff.

To meet this challenge in a cost effective manner and still remain compliant, ProcessFlows, a Platinum OpenText Distributor, worked with Castle Document Management to provide a no nonsense document management solution for a high profile legal customer.

Discover how ProcessFlows and Castle DM addressed a UK law firm’s need to save money, improve accessibility and reduce storage issues using OpenText Alchemy. Read more.

Companies are often bound by law to keep certain documents and records on file for extended periods. The expense associated with storing and managing these documents can be overwhelming. No one knows this better than UK-based CBG, an insurance and financial services broker. To add another layer of complexity to the mix, CBG was burdened with retaining records as a result of 17 company acquisitions. The risk of misplacing documents is huge but an even bigger scare comes from (imagining) the worst case scenario. With no back up or disaster recovery plan in place, how would CBG prove compliance?

As with all UK financial services organizations, CBG must answer to the FSA, a division within HM Treasury that oversees accountability and best practice. Failure to comply with FSA could result in hefty fines and dire consequences. OpenText Platinum Distributor ProcessFlows together with Archive Solutions came to CBG’s rescue with solid advice on how best to conquer the mountain of documents. Using OpenText Alchemy, CBG can now store, index, and secure their documents quickly, in electronic format, plus meet compliance regulations. Read more…

By Jonathan Sze
Director, North American Solutions

A few months ago I was approached by our Global Services team to implement an integrated fax solution for our customer, Dynegy. Dynegy had been implementing their trade confirmation process using Endur® from OpenLink®, the back-office solution used in the various commodity markets for trading, risk management and operations needs.

For years, Dynegy had entrusted Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition as part of their production trade confirmation infrastructure. RightFax ensures secure and automated fax delivery of the trade confirmations to their counterparties. Hundreds of business critical faxes were sent per day for this process alone.

As part of Dynegy’s Open Text ECM Suite rollout, Dynegy recognized a key opportunity to integrate their enterprise content management system with Fax Server: a single, tightly integrated solution will provide dramatic improvements in efficiency and new levels of productivity with their trade confirmation process..

The Solution
As with most enterprise system integration engagements, the key to delivering a successful solution is dependent on both coming up with a robust and scalable design; and an in-depth understanding of our customer’s needs, constraints, business processes and workflows. We had a number of productive scope calls with the Dynegy; and reassured our customer we can easily reduce or even eliminate some of their inefficient manual processes.

We quickly determined our Content Server FaxConnector is indeed the perfect solution for Dynegy. The prepackaged components enable Dynegy to send PDFs along with key metadata, originating from their Endur® system, directly onward to Fax Server. This eliminates the manual entry of recipient information such as fax numbers and “to be faxed” status, along with over fifty different metadata fields. The extensible design of the integration service also allows Dynegy to customize frequency of scan and fax delivery.

Most importantly, the FaxConnector logs and reports all send-fax status back to Content Server for archival – success and failure states, and status timestamps. Understanding exactly what happened with fax transmission is critical for Dynegy – and for most enterprise customers as well – because fax confirmation creates an official record of their business transaction.

The Design
From an architecture standpoint, the Content Server FaxConnector consists of three key components. On the Content Server side, the FaxConnector Module and Sending and Status Services which interface with Enterprise Web Services. Installed on the fax server are a set of Windows services and Fax Server Web Service. The Connector includes a build-in configurator for simple installation and configuration for system administrators.

High Level Architecture of Content Server FaxConnector

Click Image to Expand

Next Version
The upcoming version of our Connector further enhances the extensibility of the integration. A new plug-in architecture enables us to support complex business routing scenarios from Fax Server to Content Server. Businesses who require very specific and controlled mechanism in how fax documents flows into their content management system will be able to take advantage of the new design through customization and extensions. In addition to routing by fax users and DID numbers, for instance, inbound fax documents can also be routed based on text contents from optical character recognition (OCR) process, and be converted to searchable PDFs seamlessly. With outbound faxing from Content Server to Fax Server, we have added address book lookup functionality along with coversheets support.

Conclusion
The integration implementation was delivered very successfully. Our delivery was done on time, and the installation was completed fairly effortlessly. Working with our Global Services Consultant, Riten; and our customer contact Jennifer had been truly a blast. Nothing is more satisfying than having a delighted customer, and seeing the business value of our solution be realized. I have spoken with Jennifer since our engagement delivery, and she is pleased with both our solution as well as how well we have worked with her team throughout the project.

If you are interested in learning more about our Content Server FaxConnector; or if you would like to schedule a live demonstration, please contact us at captaris.ps[at]opentext.com.

Click to read the full case study.