Patent ID: 7836081

Claim:
A method of processing documents accessed over a computer network, the method comprising: storing one or more documents in a network data storage, wherein each document of the documents is associated with a document archive; specifying a task to be performed that is associated with each stored document, wherein the task is selected from a group consisting of reading a report, reviewing a study, examining an image, ordering a test, and initiating a procedure; creating an escalation tree that is associated with the document archive and that specifies ordered levels of notifications to be pursued until fulfillment of the task, wherein each escalation tree level is attempted in order to receive confirmation that the task has been fulfilled; determining whether a parameter associated with a current escalation tree level has been satisfied; performing process operations associated with a next escalation tree level if the parameter associated with the current escalation tree level has been satisfied; determining whether the task is fulfilled; halting the determining and performing process operations if the task is determined to be fulfilled; and appending a verification of task fulfillment to the document archive, wherein the task is determined to be fulfilled when a predetermined network event has occurred, wherein the predetermined network event comprises a change to at least one parameter in the document archive, wherein the change to at least one parameter identifies the fulfilled task and a person responsible for fulfilling the task and a date and time of fulfillment, and wherein a last process operation associated with the escalation tree is a request for human intervention that requires a physical acknowledgment action by a human operator to be deemed fulfilled.