Colon & Rectal Surgery Associates, Ltd. is an independent practice committed to providing the best care for the individual; training residents and future leaders of colon and rectal surgery; and improving outcomes through education, research and meaningful collaborations.

 

The practice was founded and incorporated in 1963 by Dr. Howard M. Frykman and Dr. Stanley M. Goldberg as Frykman and Goldberg P.A., Colon and Rectal Surgery Associates, Ltd. and has grown to integrate private practice with world-renowned teaching and research. Since its inception, the Corporation, through its affiliation with the University of Minnesota, Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery, and more recently, the Minnesota Colon and Rectal Foundation, has funded and participated in the training of over 100 certified colon and rectal surgeons. In the year 2000 they celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the program – the oldest of such programs in the United States.

 

Many surgeons have gone on to prominent teaching positions in various departments of surgery all over the world. All of the partners are engaged in ongoing research and are widely published in their field. An annual course for surgeons, which attracts hundreds of participants from around the world, is also an integral part of its mission. As the largest practice of certified colon and rectal surgeons in the world, the partners and staff are committed to patient care, teaching and research in conjunction with the outstanding hospitals in the Twin Cities community.

 

Colon and Rectal Surgery Associates had accumulated about 20,000 35mm slides that represented years of research and training materials. Each slide was numbered and a description of the slide was kept in an index card system. When a doctor was preparing a speech or training session, they would have to find the pertinent slides from the limited descriptions on the index cards and hope that whoever used them previously had filed them back in order. The slides were either inserted into a Kodak carousel and shown like an old-fashioned slide show, or individually scanned and inserted into a PowerPoint presentation. This was very time consuming and with the doctor’s busy schedule, it seemed impossible to find the time to improve the situation.

 

Colon and Rectal Surgery Associates determined that the solution was going from a manual slide library system to an electronic slide library system. Dave Williams, Manager of Information Systems, had seen Laserfiche and scheduled a demo for the technology committee. It did not take long for them to see the vast improvement this technology would bring to their organization. They purchased an eight-user Laserfiche system with WebLink from Larry Phelps, Solbrekk Vice-President of Sales. The software was installed on a new server. The slides were scanned by their staff using a Nikon automated film scanner.

 

Laserfiche now has a complete library of all their research slides that have been scanned in and indexed by various categories. Also, existing PowerPoint presentations are stored in Laserfiche and can be accessed by several index fields. Now they do not have to worry about missing slides or not being able to find the correct slide for a presentation. As a matter of fact, they can find anything in seconds that would have taken hours before they had this system. Also, the WebLink allows doctors the luxury of searching and finding presentations and slides from their home or in their hotel room if they are on a business trip.

 

Sandra Parham, Corporate Office Manager, said, “The impact on the staff has been incredible. It used to take hours to compile a slide presentation; now it takes less than one quarter of the time. For a physician to look for a particular category of slides takes literally minutes versus hours in the past. How the slides are indexed is a key factor when searching for a particular slide category. It has really streamlined my work environment by eliminating a lot of frustration, and minimizing my work load.” She went on to say, “Solbrekk employees have always been friendly and eager to help. Their response time has been great.”