Poly vs Paper Chart Dividers for Medical Records — Durability, Price, Lead Time

Poly or paper chart dividers for medical records? Here's the honest difference in durability, price and lead time, in under two minutes.

Paper chart dividers are ninety-pound index stock with a clear Mylar film over every tab. The Mylar is what keeps a tab from tearing on the hundredth pull.

Poly dividers are one piece of solid point-oh-one-five plastic. Nothing is laminated, so nothing peels, and they wipe clean with a standard surface disinfectant.

Same chart, both ways. Here's the standard eight-tab chart set built in paper at tabzoola dot com…

…and the same eight tabs in poly. Paper offers nineteen Mylar colors; poly comes in eleven sheet colors.

Now the price, collated and three-hole punched. One hundred sets in paper: three seventy-five a set. One hundred in poly: seventeen oh-four. Poly carries a one-time tooling setup, so it pays off on bigger runs.

Lead time differs too. Paper ships about five business days after you approve the proof; poly about fifteen.

So the rule is simple. Charts handled daily, with gloves, or wiped down: poly. Charts that are thinned and stored, or a tight budget: Mylar-reinforced paper.

Many facilities run both: poly on the active chart at the station, paper in the archive, with the same section names in the same order.

Either way, you see your proof free before anything prints.

Tabzoola dot com. Poly or paper chart dividers, printed to your sections. Made in the U S A.