4 ways Sisters of Charity Providence Hospitals uses health IT solutions for leaner healthcare delivery
In today's changing healthcare environment, hospitals and healthcare organizations everywhere are being tasked to do more with less — while still delivering quality outcomes. Amidst the backdrop of evolving regulations and staffing shortages, however, ensuring positive operational and financial performance without straining existing resources presents many challenges.
Confronting these challenges head-on, Sisters of Charity Providence Hospitals — a 304-bed nonprofit hospital with nearly 2,000 staff — has developed a strategic vision for employing technology solutions not only to stay lean, but also to ensure long-term business success. This vision offers insight into how organizations can improve process efficiencies, reduce waste and protect their bottom lines by leveraging key health information technology solutions.
Key solution #1: Optimizing coding productivity and quality
One often-overlooked solution for staying lean is ensuring coders are as productive and accurate as possible. After all, coders play a vital role in generating a reliable revenue stream; complete and timely reimbursement from payers is critical to any organization's bottom line. Consequently, organizations must have an effective way of measuring both coding quality and productivity so they can identify and mitigate any shortfalls, as well as strategically address existing or foreseeable backlogs.
Leveraging coding management solutions, organizations can view coding operations through a wide lens, monitoring and comparing essential performance measures including quality, accuracy and productivity at both the individual and group levels. Then, they can achieve two primary benefits by sharing this information. First, they can boost coder productivity by generating some friendly competition. In addition, they can help coders better understand their roles and accountability within the "big picture" of the organization. At Sisters of Charity, for example, accounts receivable are divided across three coding sections, with data-driven coding information used to compare outcomes across those teams.
Furthermore, coding management solutions can be useful for prioritizing workflow and assigning charts according to coders' skill level and expertise. Web-based technology, for example, enables health information management leaders to oversee the operations of both on- and off-site staff, which allows organizations to take advantage of the potential productivity and cost savings of remote coders. With all coders working more efficiently and effectively, resources are optimized.
Key solution #2: Streamlining information sharing and access
HIM departments within hospitals and health systems often encounter recurring, complex issues that cannot be resolved with straightforward, black-and-white answers. In fact, resolutions that require a consensus from many individuals may take some time to develop through face-to-face meetings, conference calls or rounds of email exchanges. However, according to a 2012 report by McKinsey Global Institute, employing social technology such as a secure enterprise social network or chat room can improve HIM staff productivity by as much as 20 to 25 percent.
Secure enterprise social networks help organizations diversify how staff communicate with one another by connecting many individuals across different departments, locations and time zones in real time. Compared with emails and phone calls that can take hours or even days to answer, social networks foster more convenient and efficient communication that requires less time and effort to obtain useful answers.
Through enterprise social networks, organizations can even boost information availability and access to expert advice. For example, HIM departments without an experienced coding manager can employ an enterprise social network moderated by an outside administrator to gain the expertise needed to resolve more challenging issues. Even with experienced managers, Sisters of Charity plans to go live with a moderated social platform so that staff members have access to a deeper knowledge base.
Sisters of Charity staff will also benefit from stored and searchable discussion threads on social networks. This "asked by one, heard by all" concept means staff can efficiently search previous discussion topics and get immediate access to effective resolutions, rather than taking valuable time to ask questions that already have been answered.
Key solution #3: Boosting the ROI process
For Sisters of Charity and many other healthcare organizations, a great deal of time and resources can be consumed trying to properly manage the release of information. Not to mention, the process itself can be fraught with risk; ROI is frequently a paper-based workflow prone to data losses and security breaches. Yet advanced ROI technology solutions can enable organizations to obtain, track and streamline ROI requests electronically. Secure, automated ROI services not only increase efficiency, they can also help organizations focus staff resources on other mission-critical HIM needs.
By providing scanning services for paper-based documents and managing requests for copies, ROI technology solutions eliminate the traditional influx of paper and electronic releases. Some solutions also offer reporting capabilities that generate dashboards and reports on metrics, allowing organizations to monitor their ROI process in one succinct view. In addition, they can help organizations comply with Meaningful Use, HIPAA and other regulations — and potentially avoid the penalties associated with violations.
Key solution #4: Ensuring a seamless transition to ICD-10
Now that ICD-10 implementation has been delayed a year, organizations must fight the urge to postpone their education and training efforts. Rather, they should seize this opportunity to completely prepare coders and staff for the transition using effective education and practice solutions.
Think about it. Another year really is not a lot of time. Organizations that have yet to roll out education and training efforts should begin securing resources now; those that have already put education and training plans in motion should stay the course. Sisters of Charity plans to use comprehensive, web-based ICD-10 education solutions to give coders the chance to train on customized, organization-relevant patient charts. They will receive repetitive exposure to conditions and procedures commonly seen within the organization.
Likewise, training on full-length charts instead of brief and sterile vignettes lets coders experience the nuances of ICD-10, which will enable them to hit the ground running when the new code set is implemented. Further training opportunities exist through live education and webinars that provide forums for learning and discussion, as well as through technology that automatically scores practice charts and offers real-time feedback to coders and supervisors so that educational issues can be quickly identified and addressed.
Automating for a leaner outcome
By integrating key technology services and solutions, hospitals and healthcare organizations in search of leaner HIM processes can vastly improve workflow through a more convenient, streamlined and standardized approach. By reducing the amount of time, resources and money wasted on inefficient, unnecessary or redundant work, organizations ultimately protect their financial performance and their bottom lines.
George Abatjoglou is the CEO of IOD Incorporated and Jho Outlaw is the assistant vice president of revenue cycle management for Sisters of Charity Providence Hospitals.