Sharp HealthCare: A Need to Standardize on Scanning Hardware for Efficiency, Cost Effectiveness

Updated on July 15, 2015

Sharp HealthCare is a not-for-profit regional healthcare system that serves a population of about 3 million people in San Diego County, California. It includes four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, two medical groups, and a range of other facilities and services. Sharp has 2,087 beds and about 16,000 employees—in addition to nearly 4,200 staff and medical group physicians—and reported $3 billion in revenue in its latest fiscal year.

Sharp is not just a large medical presence in the San Diego area, it’s also a technology leader. The organization’s pursuit of leading-edge technology has earned its widespread recognition, including accolades from sources such as Computerworld, InformationWeek, Healthcare IT News, and Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.

One critical aspect of operating such a sprawling, information intensive enterprise is capturing all of the information related to patient care—information that often takes the form of paper documents and identification that has to be scanned and incorporated into Sharp’s business and electronic medical records (EMR) systems.

For years, Sharp used a variety of scanner brands and models, but that strategy became increasingly problematic, especially as the number of scanners used by the organization grew into the hundreds.

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