A large-scale consumer-centric home and retail healthcare services company reached out to us for assistance with COVID-19 test requisition form processing. Their goal was to provide accurate lab results to their nationwide consumers within 48 hours.
As the cases of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases in the U.S. increase, states with higher cases have been increasing the need for testing especially for frontline healthcare workers. The State of Florida has already mandated testing for healthcare workers every 2 weeks and other states are expected to follow suit.
The biggest challenge that this company faced was that with the increasing demand for testing kits, there was a greater need for processing large volumes of test requisition forms in a short amount of time. This prompted the need to find a partner with a trusted outsourcing company that was capable of processing COVID-19 requisition forms within 12 hours of receipt. The client was further feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming test requisition forms, as a high volume of incoming data had to be processed within a very short span of time.
At ARDEM, we recognized the challenge of the task, knowing that we had to ensure accuracy while increasing our speed. By identifying the requirements and utilizing our previous and ongoing experience in the healthcare industry, we proposed the right solution that best fit their COVID-19 test requisition form processing needs.
Our Solution for COVID-19 Test Requisition Form Processing
- The moment ARDEM receives the lab requisition forms, they are entered into the processing cycles to ensure accurate processing within the shortest possible time.
- ARDEM employs advanced OCR, ICR and advanced automation to ensure accurate data capture from requisition forms to accurately map and collate specific fields of data including demographics, facility information, barcodes, etc.
- ARDEM then creates a template to ensure that the accurate data extracted from test requisition forms is shared in an output file that can be easily uploaded by the client into their system.
Project Description
The Challenge of Handwritten Data
ARDEM started by processing an average of 5,000 test requisition forms per week and has quickly gathered speed to process an average of 20,000 forms per day. The challenge with processing test requisition forms is that they are typically handwritten, this means even OCR or optical character recognition cannot fully capture data to 100% accuracy. As a result, effort-based capture is required to ensure that relevant data including demographics, barcodes, facility information, etc., is extracted.
Building Scalable Teams for COVID-19 Test Requisition Form Processing
Once we have ensured accuracy, the next challenge is to add flexibility to handle larger volumes of incoming test requisition forms. The journey from 5,000 forms per week to 20,000 forms per day required a solid training, management, and project plan which could easily become a hassle to manage in-house. ARDEM took on the task of recruitment and training new data entry analysts and the quality management of the process to quickly scale the team to handle larger volumes of data. The training process itself requires continuous supervision, analysis of trainee performance and assertive decision-making. Even once the new analysts have been trained, the entire process needs to be managed quite actively for effective quality-control. ARDEM’s goal was to focus on providing the back-office support to quickly process requisition forms data for faster COVID-19 testing results.
In the case of healthcare service providers, undertaking all of this in-house can be quite a task and most of them do not wish to or are unable to take on these tasks. Another factor that influences the decision to outsource test requisition form processing is due to the time-sensitive process and from an operations point of view, outsourcing is the best and most cost-effective option. By outsourcing their test requisition processing, the client was able to lower their processing costs and avoid the hassle of training an in-house team and get high-quality results with significantly lower turnaround time.
In the end, we streamlined our services to match their needs, processing the forms received within 12 hours with the utmost care to ensure the highest possible accuracy.
As both states and hospitals step up testing for healthcare and other frontline workers, the volume of tests conducted and the corresponding number of test requisition forms that need to be processed is only going to increase, ARDEM is prepared to train and build scalable teams that combine the best of manual interaction and advanced automation to deliver superior results with a faster turnaround.
The ARDEM Advantage in COVID-19 Test Requisition Form Processing
- COVID-19 Test Management: The moment test requisition forms are received, they are immediately transmitted into the processing cycle.
- Real-Time Results: Relevant data from different fields is extracted, captured and collated in real-time. The final output is entered directly into your system.
- Accuracy and Quality Checks: ARDEM employs double-key data entry alongside a slew of validation checks to ensure 100% accurate data.
- Security Assurance: We further ensure that HIPAA, PCI, PHI and PII compliances are met while entering, processing and sharing data for patient data security.
Contact ARDEM if you are facing similar problems while processing an increasing volume of COVID-19 test requisition forms, then schedule a free consultation with us today!