DocuWare > Case Studies > Douglas County

Douglas County

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

DocuWare
DocuWare System License
DocuWare RECOGNTION
DocuWare AUTOINDEX
DocuWare INTERNETSERVER
DocuWare LINK

Tech Stack

Optical Character Recognition
Full-text Search
Web-based Access
Automated Indexing
Microsoft Word

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage

Applicable Industries

Cities & Municipalities

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation
Maintenance
Procurement

Use Cases

Track & Trace of Assets
Inventory Management
Remote Asset Management

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

Douglas County, located in the southwest corner of Oregon, USA, is a rural county with a population of 100,000. The County’s IT department was initially looking for a document management system to better store 30 years of the Sheriff department’s case records. However, during their search, the County realized that a document management solution could be utilized as a research tool; therefore, the County expanded its focus and chose to implement DocuWare in the Sheriff’s department first and then expand the system to other departments. The County needed to manage many different types of documents, including criminal case reports, medical records, and a large volume of current and historical assessment and ownership records.

The Challenge

Douglas County, Oregon, with a population of 100,000, was facing challenges in managing a large volume of records across multiple departments. The Sheriff’s Department had years of old case reports stored on paper and microfilm, making the vast reservoir of information essentially useless because it wasn’t searchable. The Health Department had original documents stored in several locations, causing inefficiencies and making compliance with HIPAA privacy requirements difficult. The Assessor’s Department was dealing with a large volume of forms, resulting in long document retrieval times. The County needed a system that could handle a large volume of documents, operate in a multi-site environment, automate indexing, and possess advanced search features.

The Solution

Douglas County implemented DocuWare, a document management system, in the Sheriff’s department and later expanded the solution to the Health, Assessors and Juvenile Justice Departments. The Sheriff’s department began scanning their backlog of paper and microfiche case reports, with indexing automated by capturing the index card information from the microfiche. The Assessors department used barcodes and OCR to rapidly scan and automatically index different document types. The Health department scanned and indexed patient records back to the 1980s, and remote clinics were given web-based access to all medical records stored in DocuWare. The County invested in a DocuWare System License and the DocuWare RECOGNTION, AUTOINDEX, INTERNETSERVER and LINK modules, as well as five large Canon scanners.

Operational Impact

The implementation of DocuWare has significantly improved the time its employees have available to spend assisting residents, by dramatically reducing document storage and retrieval time.
The solution’s full-text OCR search features allow employees to not only find the right document quickly, but find the needed information within the document much more efficiently, reducing job stress and increasing job satisfaction.
The research possibilities in the Sheriff’s department have multiplied exponentially with the use of multiple index fields and DocuWare’s full-text search feature.
The Health department has scanned and indexed patient records back to the 1980s. Once the staff became comfortable using DocuWare to manage older medical records, live medical records were added to the system.
The biggest benefit the Assessors department has seen is that the reduction in document retrieval time from 20 minutes per request to 15 seconds.

Quantitative Benefit

Document retrieval time reduced from 20 minutes per request to 15 seconds.
Approximately 150 employees are now using DocuWare county-wide.
The County is now able to expand and process more records without adding personnel.