---
title: Is Your HME Business Really Paperless?
description: Streamline the connection between your fax machine and the patient on-boarding process with TIMS Software to make Intake faster and easier for your staff.
image: https://www.cu.net/hubfs/shutterstock_1041721558_office%20worker_scaledDown.jpg
---

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**

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# Blog for Home & Durable Medical Equipment Providers

We're a completely customizable solution with a dedicated team of software developers in-house. That means we can work together to make sure our system fits your HME/DME business like a (surgical) glove... even if you run things a little differently from others in the industry. Our users aren't confined to a cookie-cutter approach!

# Is Your HME Business Really Paperless?

POSTED ON:2 May, 2018

WRITTEN BY: [Computers Unlimited](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/author/computers-unlimited)

Tag: [Imaging](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/topic/imaging), [Patient Intake](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/topic/patient-intake), [Documentation Management](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/topic/documentation-management), [IDR](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/topic/idr), [Revenue Cycle Management](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/topic/revenue-cycle-management), [TIMS Software](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/topic/tims-software)

### Your Next Step for Putting Paper in the Past

So, you say you have a “paperless office”—you’ve traded your packed-to-the-brim file cabinets for a scanner and electronic document management system. You upload your faxed orders and referrals and shred and recycle the original documents. You no longer have to worry about storing piles of paperwork, and you’re probably pretty happy. Yes, your “paperless” system gets the job done, but it can get even better.

The vision of a paperless office has evolved. Today, HME businesses can be even truer to the term “paperless” by skipping the print-and-scan steps of intake and digitally streamlining the connection between the fax machine and the patient on-boarding process—no printing and scanning required.

**The Pitfalls of Printing**  
A colleague of mine is often heard saying “the print button is your enemy.” It’s true—not only does printing cost you money in the traditional sense by using up your office’s ink and paper and requiring high quality fax and copier machines, but it also costs the time it takes for a staff member to scan and upload each document you receive. Plus, no matter how organized you try to be, the print-and-scan strategy can become complicated and papers get lost, resulting in write-offs and messy audits.

[Click here to read about other Revenue Cycle Management pitfalls >>](https://www.cu.net/hme/blog/top-three-revenue-cycle-management-pitfalls-for-hme-providers)

**Out with the Old, In with Paperless 2.0**  
We know that nearly every step of the revenue cycle generates new documents that need to be tracked and stored somewhere, so you can’t ditch document storage altogether. The solution? TIMS* Inbound Document Routing* and TIMS* Imaging* systems that integrate with your core TIMS system. The advantages go far beyond just reducing paper use:

- **Instant Access:** Because TIMS* Inbound Document Routing* is connected to your existing fax service to digitally receive and upload incoming faxes, they’ll be in your system immediately.
- **Accurate Tracking:** Documents are instantly time and date stamped, so the full lifetime of the order cycle will be tracked. You’ll know the exact time the order was received, rather than when it was manually entered into the system.
- **Referral Confirmation:** You can set up TIMS to automatically send a confirmation to a referral once an inbound document is received or the intake has been created. The message can be customized, and you can even request additional information, if needed.
- **Informed Decision-Making:** Once received, referral documents can easily be assigned to a customer service representative (CSR) or a work queue. With TIMS, you can also see the workload assigned to the CSR, so you’re making an informed decision about what to do with a document and who to assign it to.
- **Electronic Storage:** Documents are filed with the order in TIMS* Imaging *and are instantly viewable throughout the system. As additional documents are generated, they are also automatically tied to the workflow, leaving an audit trail of every outgoing request and incoming document related to the order.

We live in a digital age, so why drown yourself in a sea of paperwork? Intake is just the beginning. Once you’ve mastered going paperless here, you can examine your processes for collecting and managing documents required prior to submitting a claim and your delivery/proof of delivery documents.

---

### Minimize errors and increase organization as part of a truly paperless process. Ready to learn more about  TIMS* Inbound Document Routing* and TIMS* Imaging?*

This article was originally written by Patty Harrison of Computers Unlimited. Published 2018-05-02. Modified 2018-05-02.

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