MedChart supports the upload of scanned paper consent forms for clients who do not have email or are not comfortable with going through an electronic signature process. To ensure consistency of our record request process, these paper consent forms must be the MedChart forms downloaded from your account. Please have your client only provide their signature in the place marked with an "X" (i.e., fill only the signature field and do not mark any other fields on the consent/OHIP forms, including the name, date and witness fields).
Once you have obtained your client's signature, you are ready to scan the form and upload back into MedChart to make record requests. The MedChart system needs to be able to automatically align the scanned form using the black border and detect the form version using the bar-code. As such, below are some best practices to ensure that the system does not reject your scanned form during the upload process:
- Set your scanner to Colour mode.
- Set resolution setting to at least 200-300 dpi (dots per inch).
- Scan as a high-quality image file, preferably in colour JPEG or PNG format. Colour PDFs usually work as well, as long as your scanner does not automatically perform OCR (text recognition) or put protection on the PDF file.
- Looking at your scanned file, ensure that there are no marks outside the black border, including page shadows and edges. Set the scan size to match that of the paper form. If available, try both flatbed and feeder scanners to see which one gives you the cleanest scan.
- Looking at your scanned file, ensure that the appearance of the bar-code has not been altered. Sometimes low-resolution scanning and Black & White scanning adds artifacts to the scanned image that renders the bar-code unreadable.
Once you have found a combination of scan settings that allows you to successfully upload one consent to the system, future scans using the same settings should work as well.
Great job! You now know how to check the status of a client's authorization forms!