Products & Technology

Searching for Smoother Sailing

How providers are leveraging software to improve their workflows.

• By David Kopf
• Sep 01, 2011

As providers strive to drive cost out of their operations and find new efficiencies to make the most of their staff resources and available time, they are often reengineering their business processes. Across the industry, the workflow for countless different procedures at HME providers of all sizes and stripes is being put under the microscope to see where steps can be removed and performance improved.

Not surprisingly, software is playing a large part in this effort. For the past several years providers have been striving to implement information technology infrastructure that does more than just process billing and claims. Current HME software offerings, along with other technology solutions aimed at helping HME providers, offer a wealth of features that can help providers radically overhaul their workflows throughout the organization. From claims to cash sales, information technology is not only help smooth processes, but in some cases completely reshaping workflows altogether. (For a list of various workflow features available from industry software systems and related offerings, turn to “HME Software and Technology Workflow Features.“)

Workflow management and streamlining becomes particularly important when a provider is trying to provide a customized service, but in a high volume business.

“This industry isn’t cookie cutter,“ says Jon Letko, president and CEO of US Healthcare Supply, LLC, a Milford, N.J.-based provider that focuses on providing diabetic supplies nationwide, but with a secondary focus on DME, and particularly on orthotic bracing.

So, US Healthcare requires various fine tuned process in place to help it not only support the high volume of providing national diabetic supplies, but also the more customized services of orthopedic patients. To that end Letko says his business has used Noble Direct “from the ground up“ to attain that blend of individualized service while still having streamlined processes.

“Diabetic supplies is a quarterly fulfillment of the order, where we need to have all of our process in play,” Letko says. “As an order goes out the door, I can start checking my order for the next time it comes due.”

And that becomes important, because in addition to trying to provide top-tier services for individual patients, US Healthcare Supply needs to efficiently ensure it has all the necessary documentation in place.

“If a doctor supply order is going to expire, I’m able to use this software to check as soon as the order goes out the door,” Letko adds, “because unfortunately with Medicare the documentation requests are inconsistent … but the least we can do is try to get as much in place as we can. Software like this allows us to do that.”

Improved workflow also puts providers in a position where there process are less reactionary and instead anticipate or avoid potential problems that could not only cause headaches, but also lost revenue.

A case in point is Providacare Medical Supply Ltd. (Round Rock, Texas), which has five locations in central Texas and three in northern Minnesota. Providacare is a full line provider, but also has a deep specialization in respiratory and sleep services. The provider has been implementing a companywide initiative to automate as many processes as possible using Brightree, according to Ryan Bennett, Providacare’s president and CEO.

“A lot of what we used to work on were Excel spreadsheets,”he says. “You’d run a report, and then export it, and then you’d try to work through that data.”

Now Providacare has implemented a workflow that is more proactive, he says. In an increasingly fast-paced environment, his business can turn on a dime and respond to problems as they happen, rather than agonize over the wait time required to discover a problem or negative trend.

“When we load a patient in the system, whether it’s a re-supply patient or we have re-certify or re-authorize that patient, we’re now setting auto alerts so our staff can come in and work off a dashboard,” Bennett explains. “It’s more real-time. … It’s giving us great visibility to make sure there’s no break in our revenue stream.”

In fact, with the right reports, HME software can almost define the day for staff. Such is the case for Gulf Medical Services Inc., a traditional DME provider with a specialty in respiratory headquartered in Pensacola, Fla. with eight offices across the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. Gulf Medical uses TIMS from Computers Unlimited to generate reports that accomplish that task, says Joey Graham, director of operations and administration for the provider.

“We have flexible reporting that can be scheduled,”he says. “And that makes the difference right there. We have customized reports that affect every department in the organization such that when they come in each morning and they check their email, their work for the day is sitting there. “And it’s all these things that we were never able to track very well before, but now we’re able to automate and target these flexible reports to send to our people,” he continues. “It’s made a huge difference.”

When it comes to order and claims processing, Graham notes that if anything HME software has completely turned workflows on their heads — for the better.

“The emphasis in TIMS is placed on order confirmation,” he says. “Before we used to have the bulk of our staff on the back end, cleaning up. In TIMS you have to put the bulk of your staff on the front end so you have cleaner claims going out.

“As a result we have transitioned so that the majority of our staff now works the front end — customer services, intake, insurance verification, and billing,” he adds. “That’s been a real drastic change for us. The majority of our staff used to be in billing and collections; now the majority of our staff is in customer service and billing. We have cleaner claims going out and lower denial rates, so we don’t need as many collectors.”

Another way improved workflows through software help providers is by freeing up staff to be more patient-focused, Providacare’s Bennett says.

“Instead of your staff focusing on yesterday’s business or the order that just came in and getting tied up for an hour on doing manual processes, we can shorten the work cycle down, have staff focus on the customers and referrals, and make sure that we’re providing the top level of service,” he explains.

The next big moves to make Providacare’s workflows even closer to realtime is to implement a point of delivery system and to go as paperless as possible, Bennett says. Eliminating the need to print delivery tickets and then shuffle paperwork will drastically overhaul important processes by removing a large number of manual steps, he notes.

With all the cost cutting providers are doing, it might seem counter intuitive to invest in technology, but when it’s technology that can demonstrate a massive return on investment in the form of reduced overhead and increased productivity, one place HME providers do not want to cut corners when it comes to technology. It has become a strategic asset that pays off over the short- and long-haul.

“I do not put a budget on my information technology,” US Healthcare’s Letko says. “I refuse to, and I never will. Technology is the difference in this industry. The companies that recognize that now are the ones will be around in the next five years.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2011 issue of HME Business.