Prescan promotes paperless healthcare workflows with Adobe Acrobat Sign Solutions

In healthcare, preventative screenings can help doctors diagnose diseases and medical conditions earlier, leading to timely treatment and better outcomes. With many people today taking a more proactive approach to their healthcare, more consumers are seeking ways to gain insights on their health to promote wellness and longevity.

Prescan was founded in the Netherlands in 2003 to help consumers gain access to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is growing in popularity for its effectiveness in aiding early diagnoses

Today, Prescan has six clinics in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom that offer MRIs without a physician referral, along with cardiology, dermatology checkups, and laboratory testing. Prescan’s services make it quick, easy, and accessible for consumers to improve their understanding of their own health.

To provide a smooth patient experience, Prescan uses Adobe Acrobat Sign for electronic signatures on its intake and authorization forms. To manage appointments, Prescan office staff previously had to print and mail packets of intake paperwork averaging 15-18 pages for patients to fill out and sign in advance. The paperwork was time-consuming for patients and office staff alike. Since Prescan adopted Acrobat Sign six years ago, the intake process has improved dramatically.

Time savings for patients and staff

Prescan patients can now quickly and easily sign off on health history confirmations, disclosures, and authorizations from their desktop computers and mobile devices. To help make sure e-signatures are completed in advance of an appointment, Prescan staff set up an Acrobat Sign automation to send patients reminders about incomplete forms or signatures.

In the company’s first couple of years using the electronic signature solution, staff manually initiated e-signature requests for each patient, customizing each digital document transaction depending on which services were recommended for the patient. While this was faster than previous workflows, Edwin Kortleve, ICT manager at Prescan, wanted to boost efficiencies even more.

Kortleve and his team further streamlined workflows by integrating Acrobat Sign Solutions APIs with Prescan’s patient portal, electronic health record (EHR) systems, and back-end systems. This enables automatic placement of appropriate fields for patient e-signatures and initials alongside the appropriate data pulled from patient records, all populated across documents.

“Our more automated processes reduce errors, frustration, and the delays previously associated with having to deal with lengthy, repetitive paperwork. We now see fewer patient complaints and cancelled appointments,” says Kortleve. “Office employees don’t even have to touch patient intake documents anymore. They just click to confirm an appointment and everything happens automatically in the background.”

Added protection for personally identifiable information (PII)

Prior to the API integration, Kortleve ran a pilot to test the functionality of Acrobat Sign against that of DocuSign and other applications. Acrobat Sign met the company’s standards, including for security and audit trails. “Acrobat Sign Solutions stood out for its API capabilities, robust and easy-to-set-up workflows, and simple user experiences,” Kortleve says.

Prescan uses the phone authentication that’s available as a premium second-factor authentication (2FA) option with Acrobat Sign Solutions. The feature delivers a six-digit code to patients via voice or SMS that must be entered before they view an agreement. “It provides an extra layer of identity security against snooping and cybercrimes where links might be intercepted. This mitigates the risk of an unauthorized person accessing information or signing for another person,” says Kortleve.

Prescan also uses the Adobe solution internally for asset management. When employees are issued laptops, phones, or other high-value equipment, they e-sign to confirm receipt and also to confirm any returns. In addition, employees have solution access for lower volume or one-off needs they may have for attaining e-signatures on documents, whether for internal or external transactions.

Benefits abound with e-signatures

With the digital platform, Prescan has cut back on requirements to archive paperwork in an external storage area while making record lookups faster. “We have a room full of file cabinets for our older paperwork,” says Kortleve. “If we had to look up an older agreement, it would take hours, possibly days. For the newer records completed with Acrobat Sign, we can look up and confirm what was e-signed within a minute or two.”

Based on the company’s use of Acrobat Sign for up to 20,000 transactions annually, equivalent to the elimination of 360,000 pages, Prescan is seeing strong returns. The printed paper reduction alone represents more than €8,500 saved, in addition to 2,124 lbs. of waste and 38,520 gallons of water. “It’s impressive to see the environmental impact add up to more than 32,000 lbs. of greenhouse gasses and 13,000 kW hours of energy use averted,” Kortleve says.

This year Prescan plans to further automate its records release authorization process. This will streamline patient approvals to send their imaging and other records to additional doctors or hospitals where they receive care. “Our goal is to be a paperless clinic,” says Kortleve.

As Prescan’s patient volumes continue to increase, Kortleve credits Adobe for helping its operations run more efficiently. “We see a lot more patients now than when we first started with Acrobat Sign,” he says. “Having a tool like this helps our staff be more productive as we scale our operations, while making it easier for us stay focused on delivering quality services to patients.”