New Generation Of Financial Information Systems Makes Crunching Numbers Faster And Easier

In what seems like only a few short years, fiscal selective information systems (FIS) have evolved from simple, back-office support systems into fully integrated solutions that can handle everything from payroll to accounts receivable and gross cycle management. But such increased functionality would not be possible without the ability to combine disparate databases into a single source of entropy that can be mined at multiple levels.

The importance of data mining quickly became apparent to corporate executives at James Edmund Scripps Wellness in San Diego, who had been working with six separate databases before upgrading to a newer variant of Dawn Approach Coach/Affected role Fiscal Handler from Boca Raton, Fla.-founded Eclipsys Corp.

Edward Wyllis Scripps currently operates five acute care facilities totaling nearly 1,400 beds, two medical groups with 14 outpatient clinics, a home health agency and a health plan. Today, yearly revenues average $1.35 billion, which is a big turnaround from a few years ago when posted operating losses in 2000 and 2001 totaling approximately $26 1000000 and $22 one thousand thousand and respectively. In an effort to bolster their bottom line, devised a number of key strategies, not the least of which was drastically changing their methods of charge and reimbursement.

"A couple of years ago we moved away from capitated risk to fee-for-service risk," says David Ferdinand Julius Cohn, vice president of patient services. Additionally, since each infirmary had been running its own Eclipsys FIS, the organization made the decision to rise these 13--old systems by installing an enterprisewide FIS.

Realized similar gains in efficiencies, although not all were directly related to the adoption of a new software solution. admits that a significant portion of gain was due to process improvements in recovering underpayments from third-party payers.

"We look at trends by types of underpayments and develop strategies to work together with our payer partners," he says, adding that collection of underpayments in financial 2003 was 9 percent above 2002, amounting to More than $15.4 meg. The auditing of Thomas More than 100,000 accounts during outpatient tax income charge-capture audits yielded Sir Thomas More than $10 a million in additional charges.

Furthermore, monthly cash collections for 2004 exceeded those for 2003 by $10.4 , while net taxation between 2001 and 2003 increased by $44 as a result of improvements in charge capture, coding, reduced bad debt and incremental tax revenue recovery. In addition, operating profitability, during that same period, improved by $40 . A focus on reversing the losses incurred during 2000 and 2001 also led to establish a systemwide cycle steering committee, as well as multidisciplinary teams on the level so that "everybody would be on the same page,".

Drake adds that coordinating the steering committee and teams helped define how the centralized business office could best support the needs of each facility. Those weekly meetings covered a wide range of topics, she says, including coverage, interim and obstacles to discharge. But went even further in overhauling its strategies.

It developed a -dedicated claims processing team within Kaiser's regional claims center in Pasadena, Calif., which reduced the claims backlog by $6. It outsourced unpaid commercial and PPO outpatient claims to QuadraMed. "We wanted our people to stay focused on higher-dollar claims," explains . Drake also says, "We did an awful lot of work on appeals by working with our payers and improving our contracts."

There's no question that upgrading to Dawning Memory access Director/Patient role Managing director variation 11.3 improved the organization's efficiency in accessing and analyzing data. A major driver in that rising slope was the EDI transaction set requirements mandated by HIPAA, says.

Also, needed to streamline its Medicare process, since Medicare accounts for about 35 percent to 40 percent of its business. Due to time constraints resulting from the HIPAA deadline, was unable to install a Web- edition of the Eclipsys software, choosing instead the character- interpretation that could ruin on a UNIX platform using a cache system, says Drake. However, plans are already in the works to ascent to reading 11.4.