Alright, I'm going to just accept the reality that we are moving to a paperless world as fast as we can.   Especially with the efficiencies that can be gained from electronic medical records or in the lingo of the professionals (EMR).  Fujitsu has done a very nice job of positioning themselves as the hardware vendor of choice when it comes to telling their stories through these case studies and advertisements running to look like they were articles written by objective journalists in the Atlantic.  I'm all about telling good stories.  But let's be honest here.  If your medical practice, or office already has a network multifunction device which includes any kind of desktop MFC made by Brother or anyone else in the last few years that works on a network, those machines perform pretty well.  When it comes to software that can do the job to OCR images and categorize them, you can find a bunch of great software products like Abby Fine Reader or the Virtualscan software which works with everything.  They are open source on purpose. 

If you are stuck with a proprietary type of system of hardware and software which does not offer much flexibility to do image capture and doesn't "read" the document through an optical character recognition capability and doesn't really give you any real ability to categorize, or save image files coded to correspond virtually to match up logically to your system of managing your physical documents, the conversion could seem to be pretty daunting and a painful exercise. 

This case study on Synergy which scans 5000 documents a day ranging from business card sized to legal size documents by Fujitsu scanners which scan at 40 to 80 letter size images per minute (in b/w or monochrome mode and 30 to 60 in full color scan mode) with a 50 pg document feeder (they don't say at what resolution, but I'm assuming a high enough 300 dpi monochrome resolution) to print out if needed from their central image file repository.  This particular case study highlights an efficient migration to electronic medical records and the benefits gained:

I don't doubt case studies at all, but you have to take them with a grain of salt.  Your office's existing equipment like that typical digital Multi-Function-Center device that you probably share on a network in a workgroup network, also probably has the ability to act as the scanner capable of doing all of the same things as the Fujitsu hardware or any other hardware out there.  I've seen plenty of small dental and medical practices already going to town on their paper patient records scanning them with whatever they have and chipping away at their EMR compliance issues.  Most of these scanners are the little desktop MFC devices that they picked up for just a couple hundred bucks, and they are working just fine. 

Those smaller versions can't handle a daily volume like the higher end networked devices and are not the most efficient way to accomplish the task, but you'd actually be surprised how robust some of those desktop laser printer, multi-function-center devices actually can be with a little know how from an employee who has played with it, and read the manual or has the time to talk to tech support and explain what they want the machine to do.  Those $400 or $500 desktop machines can actually scan using their built in document feeders that would rival the big boy network scanner speeds.  I found my Brother MFC 8460N (which is about 7 or 8 years old) prints at 32 pgs per minute can also scan monochrome images at about 20 pgs per minute when set to scan letter size documents at 300 dpi b/w (monochrome) scan (and a whole lot faster if I lower the resolution down to 200 DPI or 150 DPI which is the equivalent of fax image resolution).  The scanner has a built in 25 pg document feeder and doesn't take mixed sizes easily, but really requires prepped documents (meaning no staples or post-it notes, and everything basically oriented the same direction for the most efficient scanning).  The basic Brother scanning software as well as standard Windows document image management tools easily handle the document management and file saving requirements.  Like almost all scanning projects, the devil is in the preparation of documents to feed. 

My recommendation is to have someone internally knowledgeable about how to use your MFC and your records management system architecture.  Then put a plan in place as to where the images are going to be stored, in what format and in what logical naming or sequencing of virtual patient folders.  If there is no one internally with the time to do this then consider hiring a temporary project scanning consultant to come in and do this for you on site on your existing equipment or tell them to bring their equipment, or make recommendations as to what you should buy for your site that they can use for this project and that your staff will continue to use going forward (unless your office plans to go completely paperless after scanning all your existing records).

  

An overlooked source for expertise on how to do something like this could be your commercial digital print vendor.  They actually know a lot about document scanning requirements, records file management and HIPAA compliance (especially if they also print your prescription pads with security features like thermochromic inks and other compliance features), but if they don't know specifically what scanning solution will work for your office, I'll wager they know someone who is an expert and not out to just sell you a scanner or software solution.

Electronic medical records requirements may be new and the conversion may seem daunting, but document management solutions are nothing new to digital printers, and not really that complicated to them because they all have a system that works for them with robust commercial software and hardware that they deploy internally for their own print for pay environment and file management.  I suggest looking at this current challenge of EMR compliance like a barbecue grill fire that has flamed up a little too high for comfort.  You don't need to buy a fire engine to put out the flames.  First try shutting the grill lid, if that doesn't work, then consider getting the fire extinguisher or garden hose.  If that doesn't do it, then call the fire dept.