Eliminating paper cost is important, but typically only accounts for less than half of the total savings. Most importantly, it does not factor the cost of a poor patient experience. Case in point…Patient Registration. There are five key factors need in order to calculate an accurate ROI.
1. Total Registrations
Look at all of the total registrations for your hospital or healthcare facility. Volumes of all registration points are required, and should be easily obtainable.
2. Paper Expenses
The average cost of each registration form. From 10 cents for plain paper to more than $15 for pre-printed vendor forms, the cost of forms varies widely. When working with a client and they don’t know, we use the lowest number of 10 cents per form, which includes the paper, ink and maintenance of the printers printing the forms.
3. Employee Average Wage & Form Handling Time
Paper forms require human intervention to pull forms from a shelf and affixing labels, or printing them to their local printer, to ensuring the patient has properly completed the form and finally scanning it into the electronic document management solution. Our default value is $15 per hour and 90 seconds per form.
4. Form Volumes
Review the number of forms your healthcare facility is filling out in a specific time frame. Evaluate the number of forms filled out each day for a week or two period so that your volume is accurate or the median on a time period. Our research indicates the average hospital uses 3 forms per Outpatient and 5 forms per Inpatient encounter.
5. Lost and Missing Forms
Gartner indicates 1% of all forms are lost permanently and the time to recreate the form averages 60 minutes. Forms can be recreated by going back to the patient, but this is time-consuming and leaves a negative impression. Gartner also indicates 3% of all forms are misplaced, and finding the form takes an average of 15 minutes.
Based on these variables, and keeping the calculator set for the lowest numbers, i.e. paper prices at their lowest, we will calculate the ROI for a facility with 1000 inpatients and 1000 outpatients. Here is the calculation:
Paper Cost = $800
Handling Costs = $3,000
Cost to Locate and Recover Lost Forms = $936.00
Total Hard & Soft Savings = $4,736.00
Calculate Your Organizations ROI
This ROI calculator does NOT factor the patient experience. How do patients perceive your business when most consumer encounters have eliminated paper? How do they feel when they are handed a clipboard with a stack of paper? We would love to provide an audit assessment to your team to help with your calculations and ROI and determine where we can assist in filling the gaps. Schedule time with our team today to start seeing ROI at your hospital.