Precision Practice Management Case Study
Women's Care of Southern Illinois
"Precision had supported our Medical Manager software since before the turn of the century" joked Jo Bossart, practice administrator for Women's Care. "And they have provided us comprehensive billing services for many, many years. Precision has taken us through changes in CMS, ICD, CPT, HIPAA, Y2K and NPI requirements. Whatever comes next, we are sure that Precision can help us handle it."
Precision presented the Encite Clinical software to Women's Care in 2005. "We were worried about whether we could make the conversion to Encite Clinical and get a positive return on that investment" said Dr. Trevor Lineberry. "And I was concerned about whether Encite would slow me down. We have a very, very busy practice of 4 doctors, seeing more than 120 patients a day". Precision worked with Women's Care on a long-term implementation plan, converting one doctor and one process at a time, until all doctors were fully up and running on the new system. "We had so much workflow to manage, and so many interfaces, and are so busy..." said Dr. William Chadwick. "But Precision took it one step at a time - they interfaced Encite to our ultrasound equipment and our bone density machine - they even set up a wireless connection in Labor & Delivery so that we have Encite access while we are in the hospital. It is now clear that we could not go back to a paper system and be as efficient as we are today."
Precision developed custom screens for Women's Care (including ACOG), facilitated electronic prescription writing (an important part of the software that increases Medicare reimbursement), and incorporated patient flow tracking, vital to managing a busy office. "Encite Clinical is very helpful in many small ways" said Jo Bossart. "But all those seemingly small advantages really add up over time, especially across the volume of patients we serve."
In early 2008, Women's Care made the conversion from Medical Manager to Encite Billing Manager. "Moving to a web-based, Windows system was a big jump for us" said Jo Bossart. "Our staff now really enjoys the capabilities of EBM - it is very user friendly software that interfaces perfectly with ECM. Charges electronically download into EBM, and we have noticed that the combined system has had a very positive effect on our claims processing. We are now able to keep our back office workflow moving as it should, in all respects."
All of this ties into billing services as well. "Precision operates as a 'branch office' to Women's Care" said Shelly Paule, Operations Manager at Precision. "Our ARI module in EBM let's us move denied claims along quickly. We can immediately get the medical records or patient insurance information we need, directly from ECM, which means we don't have to bother the staff at Women's Care. We can re-bill a claim or file an appeal more quickly than ever before."
Women's Care has been able to shred their old paper charts in favor of ECM's electronic records. They have greatly reduced the "paper jam" that occurs in most busy practices and freed up expensive space previously used as a storage area. They are routing tasks and documents electronically in a workflow that is streamlined tremendously compared to what occurs in most practices. "This system has more than paid for itself" said Jo Bossart. "We would never go back!"
http://www.wcosi.com/
Back to case studies>>
