Decision Support From Satisfied Customers.
Ambulatory surgery centers are as unique as the patients in their care. Factors such as size, structure and specialty all impact how they operate.
But one thing all ASCs have in common is their need to access meaningful data that allows them to make informed decisions that optimize revenues and contain costs.
That’s where MEDIBIS comes in.
We asked MEDIBIS users to share their stories of how they’ve applied MEDIBIS in the administrative and business operations of their centers. From physician-owned ASCs to hospital-affiliated centers to ASC management companies, their best practices reflect the versatility of the MEDIBIS system.
Identifying Revenue Disparities – and Making Quick Corrections
MEDIBIS had been in place at the Surgery Center of Mount Zion for only a few months when it was put to the ultimate test. Revenues for the month were off – way off – and the reason was a mystery. Before MEDIBIS, they might not have even noticed the discrepancy at this point, much less been able to identify the cause. Could MEDIBIS make it right?
“We’re talking hundreds of claims. It was overwhelming,” she said. “Using MEDIBIS, we drilled down even further and were able to pull up every single patient account that was incorrectly paid, and we had all of those claims resubmitted within 48 hours. There’s no way we could’ve done that before MEDIBIS.”
“MEDIBIS has saved us a tremendous amount of money,” she added. “It’s paid for itself, no doubt.”
In that case, the revenue loss was sudden and conspicuous. But more often, revenue losses take the form of leaks rather than drains.
Mary Beth Jenkins, director of the Elliot One-Day Surgery Center in New Hampshire, has used MEDIBIS to zero in on how much revenue is produced by each procedure. This multi-specialty center is located within a wing of its parent hospital and performs about 4,500 surgeries each year.
“MEDIBIS helped me look at the specialties and find out financially if they’re a good service line for the surgery center or not,” Jenkins said. “We’re shifting services back into the hospital setting, and bringing in some of the outpatient services currently being done there for more appropriate use of resources.”
“It would not have been easy to do this before MEDIBIS.”
Jenkins said her center’s governing board has been impressed with the profitability reports and information she has produced for them with MEDIBIS.
Working With Physicians, Vendors to Manage Supply Costs
“Why is Dr. X using this, and why is Dr. Y using that?”
As director of operations for Sovereign Healthcare’s physician-owned ASCs in Ari-zona, Dr. Owen Owens has found the most valuable function of MEDIBIS for him to be case costing for multiple physicians within a single specialty. He looks at the reports to see where supply costs can be reduced or consolidated.
“For example, if we’re using screws, and they’re ordering them from three different places, I ask, ‘can’t we get some universal items?’ Applying that information allows me to have meaningful conversations with the physicians based on factual data.”
Owens is based at North Valley Surgery Center in Scottsdale. North Valley is part of Sovereign Healthcare, a California-based ASC management company.
Owens uses MEDIBIS for reporting at multiple facilities, and now does weekly reporting – something that was not feasible before MEDIBIS.
“Other people were doing (the reports) for me because I did not have the time,” Owens said. He added that MEDIBIS has allowed him to manage more effectively on both the operations and financial side of the business.
“Now I’m able to do it myself instead of having to get other people in-volved,” he said. “It gives me the information I need at the touch of a finger so I can implement changes accordingly based on true data.”
While administrators use MEDIBIS data as a management tool, physicians are responding favor-ably to the reports.
Managing Schedules (and Resolving the Occasional Conflict)
Mary Cunningham of Mercy Memorial Outpatient Surgery Center uses words like “thrilled” and “love” when she describes “her MEDIBIS.” She said that’s because, among other reasons, the data provides concrete support for decisions she has to make for her Michigan-based multi-spe-cialty facility, which is part of a larger hospital system.
When building physicians’ schedules, she’s now able to quantify the factors that go into her decisions.
“Recently, I had doctors conflicting over block time,” she said. “I was able to go in to MEDIBIS and pull up for the calendar year all the cases my physicians did, then what we charged and what we got paid.”
She said that while one physician carried the largest caseload, he actually brought in less revenue than an-other physician. Cunningham didn’t want to lose either of them, and was able to talk to the doctor with the high-est caseload to come around to a fair resolution.
“I had actual data and knew what I was doing when I made my choice,” Cunningham said. “And I was able to pull itup right when I needed it – not have someone else pull it up and send it to me three weeks later.”
Staying Abreast of Regulatory Requirements
“MEDIBIS had drilled all my data, provided the CMS proposed rates, and showed us how the changes were going to affect us,” she said.
Mena said even some of the center’s shareholders didn’t know the about the CMS rule at that point.
“To be quite honest, it is so impressive to have something to me in 12 hours that I never even requested…which of course I handily turned around and sent to all my shareholders. They were so impressed. It made me look good.”
Mena said it used to take several weeks of man hours to manually aggregate data in a format that could be analyzed.
“Even with traditional custom reporting systems, you still have to spend time building the format of a custom report,” she said.
“Now that MEDIBIS has automated this process, with a few clicks of a mouse I can analyze data and make proactive business decisions, instead of reactive ones.”
MEDIBIS enables ASCs to respond to both federal and state requirements in a timely fashion, and easing some of the regulatory burden.