A software automation initiative at AnMed Health, an Upstate South 
Carolina healthcare organization, has led to efficiency gains, the ability to rapidly retrieve and share invoices electronically, improved vendor service and decreased paper storage needs within the accounts payable department. Prior to the automation initiative, accounts payable specialists spent many hours manually processing and filing every invoice in appropriate vendor file folders. Now, they can easily locate invoices electronically, eliminating the need to manually file invoices and search for misfiled or misplaced invoices.
AnMed Health is widely recognized as a regional healthcare leader. The health system attracts patients from an eight-county area, and offers advanced medical treatment from acute care procedures to outpatient surgery and diagnostics. AnMed Health’s facilities include a 461-bed medical center campus, a 72-bed women’s and children’s hospital, a comprehensive cancer center, a rehabilitation hospital, a community health center network, multiple physicians practices and a range of other medical services.
The system’s accounts payable department processes approximately 6,000 invoices (60 percent manual/check request invoices and 40 percent purchase order invoices) each month. To help address the labor-intensive tasks within the accounts payable department, AnMed Health selected KeyMark Inc., an award-winning document management solution provider known for its expertise in engineering complex solutions and its exemplary customer service, to help address its accounts payable needs. KeyMark is headquartered in Liberty, South Carolina.
“We have many end users that regularly request copies of invoices,” said Anita Wood, accounts payable manager at AnMed Health. “These include financial analysts, accounting department employees and managers, directors and vice presidents of other departments throughout the system. We used to spend a lot of time retrieving invoices and sometimes couldn’t find them because they’d been misfiled or lost, which was frustrating to both our accounts payable staff and our end users. We knew that we needed to find a solution that would speed up our processes, make us more efficient, and enable us to provide better service to our end users.”
More Efficient Accounts Payable Team
KeyMark’s solution specifically engineered for AnMed Health was designed to capture invoices upon arrival and reduce the need for manual invoice processing. Today, invoice scanning is accomplished using a Fujitsu FI-5530C scanner. Paper-based invoices are imaged at the point of entry and transformed into process-ready information.
Hyland Software’s OnBase Enterprise Content Management Suite’s imaging workflow provides a tool to archive and index invoices. Data from each invoice is automatically recognized and indexed, making it simple to locate and retrieve a specific invoice. KeyMark engineered the solution to seamlessly integrate with AnMed Health’s accounting system. Each invoice is grouped with its coordinating purchase order, check request or other documentation.
“We’ve been very pleased with the results,” said Wood. “Now that images are electronically filed, we don’t have to spend time manually searching for invoices and there is no misfiling.”
With automatically archived and indexed documents, AnMed Health has eliminated the need for printing and filing invoices. Documents may be e-mailed with the click of a button, additionally eliminating the need for fax and mail delivery.
Compliance and time savings during audits has been another benefit of the new solution. Instead of manually searching for files, AnMed Health’s accounts payable team can now provide log in access to auditors and grant them access to the images they need.
In addition to gains in efficiency, the OnBase system provides assurance in disaster recovery. Now documents are backed up and stored in a safe location which makes them easy to retrieve in the event of a disaster.
“KeyMark is wonderful to work with. If we ever have any problems or issues with the system, I get in contact with them and by the end of the day the problem is fixed,” said Wood. “In fact, we’re considering working with KeyMark in taking our automation initiative one step further by implementing an electronic approval process.”
Location
Located in Anderson, SC, AnMed Health is a regional healthcare leader that provides healthcare to eight counties in Upstate, South Carolina. The facilities include a 461-bed medical center campus, a 72-bed women’s and children’s hospital, a comprehensive cancer center, a rehabilitation hospital, a community health center network, multiple physicians practices and a range of other medical services.
