Case Study: Replacing a paper-based process with automated charge review

How IIMC saved 40 hours a week in staff time and reduced days in A/R by 50%

About Indiana Internal Medical Consultants

Indiana Internal Medical Consultants is a 112-provider multi-specialty practice that works hand-in-hand with neighboring St. Francis Hospital to provide timely, expert care in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. 50-60% of services involve outpatient care.  Because patients come to IIMC when they are seriously ill or have a complex medical condition, their experts work quickly to reach a diagnosis and course of treatment. They consider the whole patient and promote disease prevention wherever possible.

Chanda Beckner, COO, has been with IIMC since 1996 and Leigh Williams, CCA, has been the Billing Office Manager since 2005. Frank Rizzi, Finance Manager,  joined IIMC in 2017 and together they have managed the revenue cycle oversight for the practice’s two locations in Greenwood and Noblesville, IN.

Background Information

The leadership team understood the need to replace their legacy billing system, with the goals of eliminating the reliance on paper and simplifying the billing process. They turned to their EHR vendor, Medical Informatics Engineering (MIE)’s WebChart EHR, to help them match with the right Practice Management software that could provide seamless integration with WebChart. MIE referred IIMC to Open Practice.

Antiquated processes waste time and money

Key Challenge:  How to deal with charge data coming from the hospital

IIMC was using an outdated, 30+ year-old practice management system, with visit data coming from the hospital on paper. The paper charge records were divided into piles for the staff to manually review one-by-one, highlighting issues for the data entry team to correct before billing. This very laborious process took 20 minutes per visit (and lots of highlighters).  Needless to say, the billing time was long and days in A/R were high.

Additionally, reporting was very limited

Reporting could only be done once a month due to the massive amount of time it required with no ability to save reports.  There was no real-time visibility into the A/R.

The Solution

Implement OpenPM and create a new, automated paperless charge review process with increased visibility to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Open Practice worked with the IIMC team to create a streamlined electronic review process for the charge data coming from the hospital. The new process provided an easy way to divide the work and spotlighted issues to be addressed. For example, the system highlights multiple visits with the same patient with the ability to easily merge visits onto one claim. These tools saved hours each day and saved reams of paper.

“With the extended reporting capabilities we were able to find and correct issues that we didn’t know existed.” – Frank Rizzi 

OpenPM’s reporting capabilities allow Leigh to pin any data points she wants to her dashboard.  She has full visibility into her A/R and denials. The Interactive Aging view is a favorite, providing a real-time snapshot of all outstanding A/R, with drill-down capabilities.

“OpenPM is a tremendous time saver in so many areas.” – Leigh Williams 

Time and Money saved

The new automated processes created around submitting clean claims and seeing rejections within minutes dynamically changed the day-to-day activities of the billing team. Moreover, they changed the speed at which they could bill claims.

The billing team used the time saved to focus on other key areas of the revenue cycle that need human intervention versus manual charge scrubbing and mundane charge entry. Another bonus is increased job satisfaction for their billing team eliminating needless turnover for IIMC!

With a full A/R conversion, the group could post ERA’s during their first ‘Go-Live’ week, starting with a fresh, efficient workflow reducing days in A/R.

“Best year ever!” – Frank Rizzi

Conclusion

Open Practice created a streamlined process and eliminate an archaic, manual paper process, saving overhead with staff.