Client Spotlight: Orthopaedic Group Gets Flexible Practice Management
Southern Orthopaedic Specialists, LLC, an Atlanta-based musculoskeletal practice with fourteen physicians, five physician assistants and two physical therapists, has used athenahealth’s revenue-cycle management service since November 1, 2002, the day the practice was established.
Proven ROI (in weeks, not years)
Patricia Brewster, the practice’s chief executive officer, evaluated various practice management systems – including packaged software and web-based systems – and chose athenaCollectorSM because of its dynamic rules engine and affordable service model.
athenaCollector offered a much different ROI model than software-based practice management packages (which typically involve large up-front costs as well as on-going license fees). Because athenahealth charges a modest set-up fee and then collects a small percentage of collections, ROI comes in weeks rather than years.
“athenahealth’s bottom line is based on our bottom line,” Brewster said. “They help us run as efficient a practice as possible, because in the end, that’s where their profit comes from.”
“Intuitive point-and-click system”
Manager training began a month before the official go-live day. Other staff – doctors and administrators alike – began working with the system in a classroom setting two weeks prior to go-live, learning best practices and getting comfortable with the new system. The athenahealth training team was kept on site for three to four days after the official launch to ensure that everything ran as smoothly as possible.
“This has been the smoothest deployment I have experienced.” Brewster said, referring to past software-based implementations. “Software packages are complex, and it can take a considerable time to understand even the basic operations. athenaNet® is very intuitive in nature and was built as a point-and-click system. Everyone in the office, regardless of job title, has access to it and can use it effectively.”
Immediate access to (daily) performance data
Southern Orthopaedic’s physicians appreciate the ease of access to real-time performance data. Instead of end-of-month reports customary in most other practice management systems, physicians can generate their own reports anytime by utilizing the report menu.
“Physicians are scientists,” Brewster said. “They are data-driven, and the ability to analyze data from different angles and through different lenses is very important to them. With the old systems, you would have to wait until the end of the month and order a report or pay someone to come in and write up a report on the data. Now we can give them a snapshot anytime that can accurately illustrate how the practice is doing.”
In addition, physicians are able to compare themselves with their partners and their peers using athenahealth’s Live Benchmarking feature. Live Benchmarking compares the practice’s performance on key metrics to thousands of other providers across the country. Managers find this useful in evaluating the productivity of a particular location or individual physician.
Brewster also calls athenaNet a “great training tool” because the system allows the operator to see errors the minute they occur. In other practice management systems, claim errors do not appear until somewhere between 30 and 60 days into the process. The staff would then have to fix the error, resubmit the claim and start the process all over again. These delays make it impossible for practices to make financial projections.
New initiatives? No problem
Because of our flexible, constantly updated system, athenahealth enables clients to easily participate in emerging initiatives like the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) and National Provider Identifiers (NPI).
“athenahealth was pro-active in helping us manage and monitor the status of meeting NPI requirements,” said Brewster. “They built functionality right into the system so transitioning to NPI went as smoothly as could be expected. The athenahealth network home page was a tremendous tool in following the process step by step.”
“The people make it work”
The team at athenahealth monitors the billing and claims system for each of their clients at their headquarters in Watertown, MA. The athenaNet rules engine knows what codes should be billed for certain procedures and alerts the staff if they are overlapping or over- or under-billing. Account managers also monitor the practice’s performance and follow up with practice managers by phone with alerts, coaching and recommendations for best practices.
Other teams at athenahealth work the claims on the payer side, managing submission and responding to denials and underpays, speeding up the process and getting providers paid as much and as fast as possible.
The company behind the technology is really important to Southern Orthopedic, but Brewster believes that the support goes both ways.
“You can’t purchase athenahealth’s products and services and go on auto-pilot – assume that your days in accounts receivable will be perfect, that your dashboard will look great and the money will roll in,” she said. “We have a responsibility to athenahealth as their customer to identify areas of performance that need improvement.”
Brewster describes the athenahealth-client relationship as a “two-way street.” The input of customers is invaluable and the ability to respond to that feedback is what Brewster believes makes athenahealth great.