Going Paperless

My work recently decided to go paperless.  They say it is because they want to help the environment….and to save money.

For whatever reason, it is a decision that I can get behind.

Even though it is something I back 100% the transition has not been easy for me. I like being able to have visual clues, things I can touch to help keep myself organized.

For me out of sight is completely out of mind. 

For auditing purposes we have to keep everything on file for 2 years.

For each claim we have to have the appropriate backup. Sometimes claims need 72 pages of backup.  With the amount of claims we process each day we were going through a lot of paper.

Like A LOT OF PAPER.

How we are solving this is by “printing” to PDF and saving everything to a website.

How do you print to PDF?

Here is a how to YouTube video that explains it more thoroughly and more simply than all of my attempts.

 I think the whole process is pretty slick and works remarkably well.

The only issue that I have is each time you print to PDF you lose some clarity. So if you do it too many times whatever you are printing gets illegible.

The way I avoid this is by planning out what I am going to do, from start to finish so I don’t have to print to PDF too many times.

“Printing” only once is the goal. That way minimal clarity is lost.

This does mean that I sometimes have like 7 to 10 things open all at once, and it does get a little overwhelming, but it is doable.

This is good and bad, I have to slow down and plan each step. So I am less likely to make mistakes now, but I can’t process claims as fast.

I have to have visual cues to help me stay organized. I use to have stacks of paper all over the place and I was constantly shuffling them, now that they are gone I had to find another method.

What I have now is a tracker in Excel. It is much easier and faster to use.  Anytime a claim touches my desk it gets added to the tracker. It is constantly open , which makes it a wonderful visual aid for me.

One of the benefits of Excel is it makes searching for specific things very easy (Ctrl-F) and it makes transferring information quick and seamless (Ctrl – C and Ctrl – V).

After officially going paperless I can count on one hand how many times I have printed, and you know what. That makes me feel good. I feel like I am actively doing something that will affect the future.