If you've been provided a physical copy of a document that you'd like to save into your EMR, you can always scan the document to your local computer or network and then upload the document to the appropriate patient's chart. However, if you need to scan a large number of documents, you may want to set up a scanner to submit directly to Cerbo. Read below for information on integrating your scanner into your EMR.


Setup


Scanner Requirements:

  • Your scanner must support SFTP. Please note: FTP and FTPS are NOT the same thing, and are not supported.
  • Your SFTP settings need to allow for changing port numbers. This is almost universally the case, but it's worth checking. The default SFTP port is 22, which poses a potential security risk because it's a "privileged" port. For security reasons, we do not allow third-party applications to connect to any privileged ports.

Choosing a Scanner:

  • Because IT needs differ from practice to practice, we do not have a specific list of recommended scanners. When shopping for a scanner, please review the product page to confirm SFTP support. If you need assistance finding a scanner with SFTP support, you can ask our Facebook Users Group (click here) or consult with your IT provider for recommendations.

SFTP Credentials:

  • You'll be provided a username, password, hostname (or IP address), and the port number to enter into your scanner's settings. You can get the SFTP credentials from your Cerbo implementation manager (or, if you're past your implementation stage, from [email protected]). Our support team cannot assist with entering your credentials into your scanner, if you need assistance with this step, you would need to reach out to the scanner's support team, or your IT provider. 



Using the Integration


Once your scanner has been configured, you can access your scanner's "inbox" by going to Admin > My Scanner. This will open a window listing all pending files that looks like this:



To save a document to a patient's chart, or to delete a scan you do not need to be saved in the system, click the blue "Manage" button to show/assign the document in question:




Use the assignment field on the right to pick the patient's chart where the document should be stored. Once a chart is picked you'll see additional options appear to let you name, file, and release the document in question:



When you hit the "Save Scan to Chart" option it will remove it from the Scanner-queue and file the document appropriately.


Some Restrictions and Considerations


  1. Be careful to avoid accidentally scanning together files from multiple patients into a single scanned output
  2. Make sure that your scanner settings are set to optimize the size:quality ratios. The DPI/resolution on your scanner should never need to be above 150, and if your scanner supports OCR (text recognition) turn this feature on to improve the readability and compression of your resulting scans.
  3. Most scanners default to output PDF documents, but they can sometimes also export JPG or PNG files. PDFs are the best option, but we do support PDF, GIF, JPG, and PNG outputs. Other formats will be ignored.
  4. Make sure that the resulting files are not larger than 16MB. If your scanner settings (see #2) are set correctly you should never need to worry about this, but you might consider breaking huge documents into sub-files to ensure they won't be oversized.


** Note: this integration is currently offered as a free add-on, but we may offer it as a paid addition in the future depending on the amount of server resources and support effort that the integration requires. You will receive advanced notice before any changes to your bill would occur.


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