The Challenge
The Louisiana State Board of Nursing processes licensing for 65,000 registered nurses, 7,000 advanced practice nurses, and nursing students. Each license must be renewed every other year, which means LSBN renews around 30,000 licenses annually.
Before Laserfiche, this process was very paper heavy. The licensing management system LSBN used to store licensing information was old and no longer maintained. All of the organization's data and records lived on a national association's cloud system, but as a government entity, LSBN needed to control its own records.
The organization needed an enterprise content management system to manage its own files and the information exported from its licensing system, without depending on a third party to maintain access.
The Solution: New Applications and Renewals
The process starts when a nurse logs into the Nursing Portal, fills out an application, and attaches supporting documents. Once an application is complete, LSBN's ORBS system converts it to PDF and compiles it into a ZIP file containing individual Laserfiche entry IDs and all associated metadata.
A PowerShell script runs every two hours, unzips the file, extracts the individual applications, and converts them to TIF. Each application is saved into its own folder in Laserfiche, with metadata applied to the folder and every document inside it.
The process works the same way for both new applications and renewals. If an application is missing supplemental information, staff can import it directly into the Laserfiche folder as soon as it is received. If the applicant does not send the remaining information within a year, a metadata field is updated and the folder is closed out. Incomplete applications are retained for a year before closure.
Automating Letter Writing
A key component of the Laserfiche implementation is letter writing. Whenever a license is approved or denied, the response goes out by letter. LSBN built a mail merge template in Laserfiche to handle this.
To draft a new letter, a staff member opens the appropriate Microsoft Word letter template from the Laserfiche folder and inputs the unique ORBS identifier and letter type into the metadata template. Laserfiche Workflow then pulls the relevant information from ORBS, identifies the correct letter type, and generates a new letter populated with that information.
The letter is printed, signed, and saved back into the folder using Laserfiche Snapshot, which captures it as a TIFF. The original is mailed to the applicant.
The letter writing part of the Laserfiche solution saved our whole project because it used to take so much manual work.
Isonel Brown, Chief Administrative Officer, Louisiana State Board of Nursing
Managing Complaints
Occasionally, a complaint is filed against a nurse. These complaints come in through ORBS and are sent to Laserfiche for storage, where they can be reviewed and acted on urgently, even by staff working from home.
Everything related to a complaint, including supplemental photos and supporting files, lives in a single folder. Everything needed to produce the full paperwork trail is immediately available, with no separate system to check or physical file to locate.
Laserfiche shines the best when complaints need to be reviewed urgently. We can access and act on that immediately, even from home. We can take action immediately and protect the public.
Isonel Brown, Chief Administrative Officer, Louisiana State Board of Nursing
The Benefits of Laserfiche
The Laserfiche implementation showed its true value during the COVID-19 crisis. Because all documents were already stored in Laserfiche, LSBN employees were able to shift to remote work within two hours of the announcement, with no scramble to find a way to access records from home.
Even those employees who have been previously resistant to change were happy to be able to work from home. We wouldn't be able to do that if we didn't have Laserfiche.
Isonel Brown, Chief Administrative Officer, Louisiana State Board of Nursing
Beyond remote access, LSBN significantly reduced the volume of paper stored in its file room. New paper is created far less often. Files are never lost, information is easier to find, and complaints are resolved much faster than they were under the old paper-based process.