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MRK and the pursuit of a paperless office

2018 has brought many changes to the MRK workflow process because we transitioned to a paperless process of receiving records. Five years ago, we would talk about going digital, hem and haw and say we will think about it and then say yea - sounds complicated. Late last year it dawned on us we were late in arriving to the digital party and that the paper records were killing us. Storage was scarce, files were getting bigger and more difficult to manage and staff had to make trips in to the office and some lived quite a distance away. Law firms were also asking us if we could receive the records digitally, and some were asking why we didn’t go digital. The technology had improved, making it easier – and more cost-effective – so we decided that we would start the process. The benefits included increased mobility and flexibility for our consultants and staff. We realized that we would never be “paperless” but we would be using less paper. It also meant that with our use of the cloud where ever our staff was they would have records available to them. This is important as we have several satellite offices. We had to implement a new workflow process and training for all our record reviewers. This took some time and overall the process has gone smoothly. We have new job duties for the office staff as some duties were decreased when we dramatically reduced the inflow of paper records. We are still transitioning but feel we have a great start on the process. Now, on most days, we wonder, what took us so long? So send us your digital files.