Ricoh (News - Alert) Americas Corporation, a provider of digital office equipment and document management solutions and services, will demonstrate its healthcare solutions at HIMSS 2012 this week in Las Vegas, according to a company press release.

The company has developed what it calls the "Paperless Maturity Roadmap," which, it says in the press release, can show healthcare providers how reducing paper and paper-based systems can create operational efficiencies and reduce costs, two of the most critical challenges in healthcare today.

At the exhibit, Ricoh will show off its healthcare solutions, including how to “stabilize the information capture and production environment, rationalize technology resources in a more cost-effective way, and optimize information management to help drive new levels of integration, speed and accuracy.” Ricoh feels these are the core actions healthcare organizations must focus on to succeed in a paperless world.

But not everyone agrees. Chuck Wright at Orlando Medical News writes that at least half the doctors who have switched over to electronic health records (EHRs) for documenting patient data still keep paper charts and write their notes on them because it’s easier than checking off the boxes on EHRs.

Ricoh’s solutions could convert doctors, the company feels. The solutions include advanced clinical and administrative document capture, a way to determine electronic health record (EHR)/Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) readiness; enterprise forms management; enterprise content management and enterprise output management.

A recent white paper points out that while physicians want to move to electronic health records, only about 20 percent of small practices and 30 percent of large practices have converted over. Why so few? The simple reason is that “physicians, like everyone else, don’t like change,” says Dr. Andrew Ury, a board certified family practitioner and CEO of Practice Partner, a practice management software provider, in the white paper. “EHR implementation is a huge change,” he notes. “It can fundamentally alter the way that services are delivered and how the business side of the practice runs.”

But Ricoh disagrees with that. To prove it, the company will demonstrate at the show a software solution by Inofile that lets healthcare providers “attach loose sheet documents securely, accurately and effortlessly to a patient record in real time,” allowing healthcare providers to scan documents on a workgroup MFP and “use the Inofile software to convert as well as receive and send the electronic data in HL7-CDA, the standard language for exchange of healthcare industry information,” according to the press release.

The software then attaches the documents to the correct patient record. HMMSS attendes can see a prototype of this software solution, ported to operate on a dedicated Ricoh healthcare MFP, the press release states.

"All healthcare providers are on a journey toward a paperless environment, though no two are at the same place along the path," said Jon Elwell, vice president, Healthcare, Ricoh USA, in the press release. "We believe the greatest opportunity for savings is actually within the page that's never printed. Our solutions can help any provider improve efficiency, advance their EHR agenda, and measurably improve organizational performance. No company is better suited to helping healthcare organizations mine inefficiency out of their document-burdened processes than the one that has a legacy of document management solutions at its core."

Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM (News - Alert) in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.