Automated method and system for reducing the improper disclosure of documents

1. An automated system to reduce improper disclosure of documents containing a plurality of image pages of image information for a patient, comprising:

an optical character recognition (OCR) processing tool that passes each document through an OCR module that converts a predetermined number of pages of the document image information into text information, wherein the predetermined number of OCR'ed pages is less than all the pages for at least one sampled document; and

an automated quality control (QC) process tool that uses the text information to perform a review for patient demographic matching conditions in the documents, wherein the automated QC process tool determines whether a predetermined number of pages of each document can be positively identified with the patient, if the document exceeds a predetermined threshold of positively identified pages, then the document is released to deliver to a requester of the document;

a QC assist process tool that receives documents that fail the QC process tool test for review and validation by a document reviewer, the QC assist process tool comprises a “heat map” for each failed document, a visual representation of each page of the failed document is displayed and each page of the failed document is visually coded based on an amount of matches of patient demographic information received from a requester of the documents to patient demographic matching conditions in the text information for that page which facilitates the reviewer to quickly view only failed documents and validate documents containing a sufficient number of matches for release to deliver to the requester.

2. The automated system to reduce improper disclosure of documents, according to claim 1 , wherein if each page of the document is not positively identified, then the QC process tool scans for improper patient identifiers that do not match the patient's identifiers, if found the QC process is terminated.

3. The automated system to reduce improper disclosure of documents, according to claim 2 , wherein the QC assist process tool provides side by side comparison of requested document information with the text information only if the predetermined threshold of positively identified pages is not met.

4. The automated system to reduce improper disclosure of documents, according to claim 3 , “heat map” of the document coded is based on an amount of errors contained in the documents which facilitates the operator to quickly view only documents exceeding a predefined threshold.

5. The automated system to reduce improper disclosure of documents, according to claim 1 , wherein the QC assist process tool provides side by side comparison of requested document information with the text information only if the predetermined threshold of positively identified pages is not met.

6. The automated system to reduce improper disclosure of documents, according to claim 5 , wherein the “heat map” of the document coded is based on an amount of errors contained in the documents which facilitates the operator to quickly view only documents exceeding a predefined threshold.

7. A system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents, comprising:

a tool that imports electronic copies of the documents, the documents contain one or more image pages of image information for a patient;

an optical character recognition (OCR) processing tool that passes each copied document through an OCR module that converts the copied document image information into text information;

an automated quality control (QC) process tool that compares patient identifying information received from a requester of the documents to patient demographic matching conditions in the text information of the copied documents, wherein the automated QC process tool tests whether each copied document can be positively identified with a patient, copied documents that pass the test are released to deliver to the requester; and

a QC assist process tool that receives copied documents that fail the QC process tool test for review and validation by a document reviewer, the QC assist process tool comprises a “heat map” for each failed document, a visual representation of each page of the failed document is displayed and each page of the failed document is visually coded based on an amount of matches of patient identifying information received from a requester of the documents to patient demographic matching conditions in the text information for that page which facilitates the reviewer to quickly view only failed documents and validate documents containing a sufficient number of matches for release to deliver to the requester.

8. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 7 , wherein the visual representation of each page of the failed document is visually coded based if the reviewer has validated the page.

9. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 8 , wherein the visual representation of each page of the failed document displays the number of matches contained in that page.

10. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 9 , wherein the visual coding comprises a first visual coding for no matches, a second visual coding for one match, a third visual coding for more than one match, and a fourth visual coding for the validated page.

11. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 10 , wherein QC assist process tool provides a plurality of OCR methods for the reviewer may run on selected failed documents.

12. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 11 , wherein the visual representations have a rectangular or square shape and are presented in a grid format of rows and columns of visual representations to facilitate the display of patterns in matching and non-matching pages.

13. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 12 , wherein the QC assist process tool comprises a viewer to display pages or sequences of pages by selecting the desired visual representations.

14. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 13 wherein the QC assist process tool provides side by side manual comparison of the patient identifying information received from the requester to the patient demographic matching conditions in the text information for a page.

15. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 7 , wherein the visual representation of each page of the failed document displays the number of matches contained in that page.

16. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 7 , wherein the visual coding comprises a first visual coding for no matches, a second visual coding for one match, a third visual coding for more than one match, and a fourth visual coding for the validated page.

17. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 7 , wherein QC assist process tool provides a plurality of OCR methods for the reviewer may run on selected failed documents.

18. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 7 , wherein the visual representations have a rectangular or square shape and are presented in a grid format of rows and columns of visual representations to facilitate the display of patterns in matching and non-matching pages.

19. The system to reduce improper disclosure of documents from a provider of the documents to a requester of the documents according to claim 7 , wherein the QC assist process tool comprises a viewer to display pages or sequences of pages by selecting the desired visual representations.