It has been a big learning curve for some providers and staff to go from a largely paper-based office to an electronic one. While the processes and workflow are imperfect, we're committed to this product and Software Vendor.
Health Director of the District Health Department, North Carolina
The Health Director of a District Health Department continuously works to improve patient care within the public health system, covering three counties in the northwestern region of North Carolina. The District Health Department has approximately 45 users across all three counties, including practice managers, nurses, providers, and others.
They were frustrated with an antiquated system they were using and facing the following issues and had requirements:
- They used a legacy billing system earlier, and some claims were sent on paper; they also had paper-based medical records charting.
- An entirely paper-based system requiring practice personnel to re-key patient data multiple times across multiple screens.
- It needs a robust integrated system and needs many features.
- Manual processes create operational inefficiencies.
- Not having a centralized and integrated electronic claims processing and submission solution.
- The system could have been more convenient and faster, with no data and reports integration.
- It can support any number of users.
After consulting with the rural health centre and a community care consulting physician who had evaluated several commercially available PMS+EHRs, the decision was made to implement iTech & Patagonia's integrated EHR, practice management, and billing solution in the August 2012 fiscal year. This integrated solution ranked highly in technology and support, offering a competitive price point for the fully integrated solution.
The solution has built-in Public Health Specific features such as debt set off, bad debt writes, a handful of custom reports, sliding fees schedule, Atypical IDs, and other features, the need for being able to submit claims to insurance companies and get paid and manage the practice effectively.
Solution Implemented
- Once the application ran, the department rolled out Practice Management to one county and then rolled out to the remaining counties in a few months.
- It was completely transformed from a largely paper-based office to an electronic office.
- Improve overall workflow and increase efficiency.
- Gain instant access to financial data within the system.
- Department personnel and providers no longer must repeatedly re-key patient data across multiple screens, which makes scheduling patients easier.
- A very easy-to-use billing system makes billing to third-party insurance companies faster and more efficient.
- Turnaround time to receive reimbursement/payment within a week, at the latest, if not sooner. In the past, they were lucky to get prices back within three to four weeks.
- Increases in cash flow/patient collection due to the comprehensiveness of the software.
- Ability to find any errors in the claims and corrections made before submitting them to insurance companies or clearinghouses.
- Now, they have needed reports, such as aging, AR reports, and cost analyses, and they are user-friendly.
Return on Investment (ROI)
- The biller processes over 1300 HCFA claims a month with less than 6% denial rate compared to the earlier 10% denial rate.
- The biller received Electronic ERAs (that are auto posted) for about 93% of the claims sent and the remaining 7% on paper EOBs (that are manually posted). The 93% auto posting saved 100s of hours of data entry savings every month.
The integrated EMR+PMS solution of iTech & Patagonia is the leading software vendor in the public health clinic space in North Carolina and is expanding our public health clinic provider base in other conditions such as Ohio, Maryland, Kansas, and Illinois. The integrated solution currently has 500 providers in 48 counties and processes over 600K claims across all Public Health Clinics combined.
