Success stories

Watch Webinar: How Order Management Improved Care Delivery and Cash Flow for a New York Home Health Agency​

How Order Management Improved Care Delivery and Cash Flow for a New York Home Health Agency

HCR Home Care of Rochester, New York, is a Certified and Licensed Home Health Care Agency and Health Home Care Management provider. They offer a full spectrum of in-home health care and social services ranging from nursing, therapy and rehabilitation, personal care and assistance with activities of daily living, and care management.

Previous Limitations

Individualized care is a priority for HCR, and their care is driven by providers’ orders which requires extensive external communication and support staff, particularly for patients with complex care needs.

The company uses two separate electronic medical records (EMR) programs, which means a lack of unified order management. Tasks were previously assigned in each EMR and individual documents were stored on local servers.

With no way of connecting EMR information, representatives had to manage order status using an open-response comments field. That meant using the same field for patient notes and the number of fax attempts to physicians. They had to manually enter the receiving physician’s information to send a fax.

Additionally, many patients had records on both EMRs. Without a system tying the two together, HCR had no way of developing a cohesive process that could be duplicated in each system or streamlining communication to providers. This slowed the process and prevented HCR from building the kind of provider relationships they wanted and getting claims out to payors for reimbursement.

HCR Home Care knew they needed to improve their order management process. They had to reduce or eliminate manual order processing and improve process automation to increase efficiency.

HCR Goals

HCR Home Care had two primary goals, to strengthen ties with patients’ healthcare providers and reduce held charges.

To accomplish these goals, they needed to shorten the turnaround between sending a patient’s orders to receiving a provider’s signature. That meant overhauling order processing and creating a unified e-Sign portal covering both EMRs.

HCR wanted the solution to also allow for better process and document management. With more visibility on how team members used their time and documents move through our systems, managers could increase efficiencies in staffs process and fast-track the receipt of orders to improve the timeliness in which we have comprehensive medical records.

Why WorldView?

At the time, HCR Home Care was already working with several WorldView applications to manage medical records, human resources, and accounts payable documentation. Since a primary goal was to bring everything under one umbrella, a WorldView partnership was a natural choice.

As an experienced collaborator, WorldView could create integrated content management functions that used the same HCR data. Such integrations would allow HCR to track communication across both existing EMRs, and prevent employees’ workflow disruptions. The company could also minimize the time needed to learn new systems.

Most importantly, as a valued partner, WorldView, known in the industry for its enterprise content management systems, had the trust of HCR Home Care and its personnel.

WorldView’s Action Plan

After a detailed discovery process, WorldView migrated all HCR records to the new system. There were fundamental changes to intake, authorizations, and order management. With the same resources, HCR could now track physician orders efficiently, deliver more quality care and release claims faster.

Outcomes

Since implementing WorldView’s strategic plan, HCR’s turnaround for patient orders has shortened from nine days to six. Automatic faxing played a key role.

HCR has also seen a significant reduction in claims holding for unsigned orders. The new system implementation occurred at the end of 2021. At the end of February, claims holding had dropped from over $305,000 to under $100,000.

HCR has also noticed improved order visibility, including sending dates and times, follow-up actions, and related productivity levels. Managers and employees can now effectively triage workflow.

One of the best improvements has been tracking orders by the number of days outstanding, allowing EMR specialists to prioritize orders based on age. Compliance with filing deadlines has improved, as has cash flow. Unsigned orders have decreased by 17%.

Staff use of time has improved dramatically as well. HCR reports that its three full-time employees now can work more efficiently and effectively with the clinical team and provider partners.

A Smooth Transition

HCR describes the process as “an easy transition.” They credit WorldView’s dedicated support team, which provided excellent customer service and helpful resource guides.

HCR has found WorldView’s customer support professionals to be knowledgeable, well-organized, and thorough. They recall a team that went above and beyond to ensure any necessary support was available.

A Top-Down View

With two disconnected EMRs, HCR Home Care spent too much time sending patient orders and inundated providers with orders on an almost daily basis. It was also hard to tell which orders were on-time or overdue.

WorldView expanded HCR’s productivity by creating a unified content management system. Since then, the turnaround to a physician’s signature has decreased, staff productivity has improved and provider satisfaction has been elevated.

The HCR team appreciated the smooth migration to the new order management system and is looking forward to further work with WorldView.

“If we dream it, you can make it happen. I feel like I live in Disneyland when I work with WorldView!” -HCR

Watch Webinar:How Order Management Improved Care Delivery and Cash Flow for a New York Home Health Agency​

Watch Webinar: An Accounts Payable Efficiency Engine That Will Maximize Your Operations

How WorldView’s AP Solution Helped Dakota Premium Hardwoods Process Invoices Faster

About Our Partner

Dakota Premium Hardwoods is a reliable hardwood and lumber company with branches in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Established in 2007, the customer-centric company takes immense pride in providing its customers with high-quality hardwood and lumber products from renowned brands. 

The Challenge

Dakota Premium Hardwoods received nearly 90% of their invoices via email, but their invoice handling was manual — making the process extremely time-consuming. 

• Every day, the accounts payable (AP) accountant would receive roughly 60 to 100 invoices via a dedicated AP email.
• The AP accountant would then move the invoices from the AP email to a shared drive. 
• Afterward, the AP clerk would process the invoices manually and label them depending on the due date or discount date to ensure managers approved them on time.
• Finally, the AP clerk would send the invoices to the company’s branches for approval. 

This entire process was tedious. The AP accountant used to spend a lot of time checking emails throughout the day, and she would take between one and a half to two hours processing invoices daily. 

Not only was the process time-consuming, but it was also quite demanding because the company had only one dedicated AP accountant. Additionally, branch and operations managers would take a long time to approve invoices resulting in delays. 

To tackle these challenges, Dakota Premium Hardwoods needed an AP solution to automate and accelerate their AP process. They also needed an AP solution that would integrate with Agility — their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. 

The Solution

Before switching to WorldView, Dakota Premium Hardwoods had worked with another vendor to automate their AP processes. Unfortunately, the other vendor didn’t deliver. They couldn’t integrate their AP solution with Dakota Premium Hardwood’s ERP software and their team couldn’t be reached for support when needed.

After the poor experience with this vendor, they evaluated several other solutions and selected WorldView’s AP automation solution. The AP system implementation with WorldView went smoothly. 

WorldView implemented an AP automation solution based on the AP department’s requirements that worked seamlessly with Agility, eliminating manual processes from the AP workflow. 

Results

Dakota Premium Hardwoods has seen a positive transformation in its processes since implementing WorldView’s AP automation.

Time Saving and Automation

AP processes that once took one and a half to two hours a day — not including the time it took to enter data into Agility — are now done automatically, saving hours of time.

With WorldView’s AP automation solution, Dakota Premium Hardwoods has eliminated manual processes from its AP workflow, such as manually retrieving invoices via email, coding them, and then sending them to all the branches for approval. Plus, because WorldView’s AP software works seamlessly with Agility, it has expedited the AP workflow. The AP solution has not only resulted in significant time savings but has also enhanced the accuracy of the AP process.

Increased Collaboration

In addition to speeding up the AP workflow, WorldView’s AP automation software has also enhanced collaboration among the AP team members and managers. Before implementing AP automation, the AP team members couldn’t easily keep track of each other’s progress on tasks. They used to have to contact each other for updates. The AP team members also couldn’t easily track how long it took managers to approve invoices, often leading to delayed approvals and late payments. This resulted in missing out on important discounts from their vendors.

WorldView’s automation solution has enabled the AP team members to collaborate in real-time via an intuitive centralized dashboard. They can easily view each other’s progress and see all the invoices that managers are yet to approve via the dashboard. 

This real-time collaboration has promoted transparency. It has also enabled the AP accountant to send timely reminders to the branch and operation managers to approve the invoices before the due date or discount date, eliminating late approvals and payments.

Room for Company Expansion

Like many businesses, Dakota Premium Hardwoods plans to expand its reach by opening more branches in other states. Without AP automation, the company would need to recruit more people to join the AP department. However, by leveraging WorldView’s AP automation solution, the company won’t need to hire more personnel — WorldView’s AP automation solution will scale as the business grows.

Seamless Implementation

Dakota Premium Hardwoods’ AP team was pleased with how WorldView handled the implementation process. The implementation went smoothly, and the AP team appreciated the WorldView team’s attention to detail and prompt response time when they needed assistance. 

Julie Moseley, Dakota Premium Hardwoods’ Assistant Controller, said, “WorldView’s response time has been pretty quick, which is really nice. So far, everything we’ve had an issue with they’ve been able to resolve.”

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Watch Webinar: How a Home Health Agency Simplified Orders and Accelerated Response Times

ABOUT OUR PARTNER

How a Home Health Agency Simplified Orders and Accelerated Response Times with One Seamless Integration

Boston Home Health Aides, LLC (“BHHA”), located in Lawrence, MA, is a Medicare/Medicaid Certified Home Health Agency which provides Skilled Nursing, Physical & Occupational Therapy, and Certified Home Health Aides. They offer a comprehensive band of skilled services delivered by the most qualified professional nurses, aides, and therapists in the privacy and comfort of the home.

Process Constraint

The Covid-19 pandemic upended the entire healthcare delivery system and home healthcare was not immune. Already dealing with a tedious ordering process, BHHA needed a better plan to pull required data from their EMR, enter order details, deliver to partners, collect signatures, easily search and follow-up on order status, and quickly access reporting for compliance and re-accreditation.

Using a combination of spreadsheets, manual data entry, and searching for order status was accelerated when the pandemic hit. It was difficult to keep up with all the orders and took too much time to get out the door. Orders were getting lost, and orders were delayed. BHHA was never able to clear out the “To Be Sent” queue weekly.

As BHHA’s census grew, it was taking on average an additional 15 days to deliver orders which exceeded the payor recommended timelines to meet their regulations.

Agency Goals

Boston Home Health was looking to improve their order process due to larger census volume, outdated delivery technologies, wasted administrative time and lost revenue. Unlike many home healthcare agencies, Boston Home Health Aides serves 99% Medicaid and MCO/ACO third-party commercial insurers that get their funds through Medicaid.

Why WorldView?

Boston Home Health Aides (BHHA) has an existing deep integration with Axxess®, a cloud-based enterprise software as their EMR. Axxess is a valued partner with WorldView who has a direct integration with the Axxess solution which simplifies the documentation and ordering process. WorldView offers an intuitive experience by gathering the data right from Axxess and leverages that data to cross reference new records and ordering information saving time by automating BHHA’s day-to-day workload in a compliant and easy-to-use manner.

“The returns implementing WorldView into our business platform has definitely outweighed the investment.”

Root Cause Analysis

Prior to using WorldView, orders were faxed manually using electronic faxing via email. Then, a list of providers that were stored were downloaded into an excel spreadsheet. From there, a calculation was performed to turn fax numbers into email addresses that were used to fax the documents.

The provider fax email spreadsheet was then converted into a .csv filed and mapped into a shared mailbox with all Outlook 365 users and into their contact directory. An email template was created with required fields for orders including date of order, deadline for signature and other payor regulations.

Using the “orders to be sent” queue in Axxess, it was then compared to the plan of care spreadsheet. In the compilation of the email, the fax email for the provider populates and order attachments are added through a drag and drop process. After an order is sent, it was required to monitor the electronic fax notifications for delivery status. Any failed deliveries were manually re-sent through a fax machine.

Any received documentation would be manually entered into the spreadsheet and then manually uploaded into Axxess.

Due to the volume of orders being placed, errors were sometimes made in spreadsheet data entry and orders uploaded into the wrong charts. Finding errors required manually searching through received emails by date to locate misplaced, missed, or misfiled orders.

“Training is simple and allows employees to have control over the data they are accessing.”

Data Informed Action Plan

The WorldView implementation team’s plan included the goal of streamlining the order entry process. The objective was to eliminate the errors that were increasing due to a larger census volume. Some of these errors included incorrect data added to a “plan of care” tracking spreadsheet, and orders were uploaded to the wrong patient charts. In order to fix those errors, employees manually searched through documentation, spending valuable time during the day. With WorldView’s customization option, it allowed BHHA to look outside a single template system and create a priority of features that provide search capabilities as well as a robust reports menu and archiving feature.

Data Informed Performance Improvement

Since the implementation with Worldview, 90% of the ordering process is now automated. A bonus since the integration is that BHHA can also run reports that gives a view into who their top providers are and those that may be slow in returning orders. They can discuss as a team how they can get specific providers to prioritize paperwork, leading to faster return of orders.

Recorded training sessions provide continuity of operations with new staff. With intuitive applications and a dedicated client success team, BHHA never has to worry about getting their questions answered. WorldView provides robust comprehensive training all the way through. Each agency is paired with a devoted account manager that helps train across all departments to meet their specific needs.

The access to on-shore support is also a process benefit – meeting immediate needs, eliminating any communication issues and delays in response due to time differences.

“WorldView is a legacy system you can put into place that will stand the test of time.”

View From the Top with WorldView

Worldview saved 20 hours per week for the BHHA team allowing them to put those wasted hours into other duties with a constricted staff. With more orders getting out of the door quickly, they become more relevant to the providers. Some duties that took a backseat or were delayed due to the long order

process that can now be addressed include insurance audits, compliance reviews, evaluating agency policies and processes preparing for CHAP re-accreditation.

In addition, there is more time for employees to recover orders that are not being returned or delayed for many various reasons. More time could be spent on figuring out issues and contacting providers as follow-up.

Having signed orders in the chart has presented higher levels of compliance due to refaxing and automatic tracking. This gives BHHA the ability to download those orders quickly for review and eliminate issues that may lead to financial recoupment. It also points to medical necessity making the case for providing the care for the patient in the first place.

Compliance with Medicaid conditions of participation has gone from fluctuating between 40-60% before WorldView, to now above 80% – a 20-50% improvement.

Future Opportunities

The results of the WorldView implementation were enthusiastically received by the BHHA staff. With an established, successful partnership, the companies are looking forward to the future with the potential of expanding into a mobile application that leverages custom e-forms.

“The major gift WorldView has given us is the gift of time – we now have time to monitor return orders, stay on top of compliance standards and any corrective action and performance improvement projects making us a more successful company”

The team at WorldView is focused on delivering results & business impact to clients. WorldView provided Boston Home Health Aides a streamlined process that simplified orders and accelerated response and compliance. But beyond the operational win, BHHA has seen a high return on investment, which means an impact to their bottom line

All Quotes by Jason Gauthier Assistant Administrator/Operations Manager Boston Home Health Aides, LLC (“BHHA”)

Watch Webinar: How a Home Health Agency Simplified Orders and Accelerated Response Times

ABOUT OUR PARTNER

Trinity Health at Home

Trinity Health at Home (THAH) provides exceptional healthcare for patients where they are most comfortable: in their own home. Through our family of home care and hospice agencies across the country, we empower patients to achieve their health goals and avoid preventable ER visits and hospitalizations.

THAH is a member of Trinity Health, one of the largest Catholic healthcare programs in the United States. With our own Virtual Care Center and easy-to-use technology, our patients benefit from 24-7 remote monitoring in real-time and are empowered to achieve healthcare goals and avoid preventable hospitalizations. With advanced technology and vision, we are shaping the future of healthcare.

The THAH organization centralized many administrative services at our Livonia, MI, headquarters to enable our clinicians to focus on care in the communities we serve. When we centralized our new patient referral processing nationally to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies, we recognized need for a highly efficient and reliable cloud-based document management system to securely receive faxed patient referrals and related patient health information directly from our customers and be immediately available within our Electronic Medical Record system in real time. That’s what led us to WorldView.

How would you view WorldView’s vision for the home health & hospice industry?

Home health and hospice is a growing, fast-paced, 24/7 operation powered by a mobile workforce in the communities we serve. Swift, efficient referral processing and patient health information is critical to our care delivery, from ensuring fast start of care to ongoing care delivery. Reliable, real-time documentation in our EMR is a necessity. WorldView has met this need for our robust national operation. We are confident that WorldView is a scalable solution that will be shaped by evolving needs of home health and hospice agencies.

How long have you been working with WorldView?

We piloted WorldView in mid-2017 at the Clinton, Iowa agency, then and completed a roll out to all THAH agencies by March 2018.

When first decided to join forces, what was the key factor in making that determination?

Trinity Health at Home’s prior documentation system had reliability issues. Unexpected downtime for notable periods of time bottlenecked referral processing and led to frustrating experiences for our customers and colleagues. Reliability was our primary factor in selecting WorldView.

Can you explain how your organization has seen improved patient care after implementing WorldView solutions?

WorldView’s system reliability has enabled us to receive information in real time to kickstart timely referral processing. As a result, our scheduling team can move forward with scheduling the patients’ swift start of care, with clinicians empowered with robust information about each patient’s unique care needs. This is extremely important to our patients’ outcomes and satisfaction.

The reliability of our document management solution has resulted in favorable experiences for our key stakeholders at our agency and referral source offices. Physician offices and senior communities are faxing appropriate documentation and we are receiving them without issue. Our prior solution’s frequent downtime had resulted in significant start of care delays, which negatively affected patient care and tarnished our reputation. In terms of usability, colleagues involved in the workflow have expressed appreciation for WorldView’s intuitive user interface.

Can you speak to the efficiencies WorldView has been able to bring to your organization?

Our prior documentation management solution was down frequently. This required documentation to be manually uploaded to our EMR system, which hindered efficient processing and contributed to bottleneck situations and start-of-care delays. Contingent colleagues were often required to complete the manual file uploading.

WorldView reliability has enabled us to receive information in real time to kickstart timely referral processing. As a result, our scheduling team can move forward with scheduling the patients’ swift start of care. This is extremely important to our patients’ outcomes and satisfaction. This has also eliminated the need for contingent colleagues’ manual work due to prior solution’s downtime. These resources have been re-deployed for other important work.

The reliability of our document management solution has resulted in favorable experiences for our key stakeholders at our agency and referral source offices. Physician offices and senior communities are faxing appropriate documentation and we are receiving them without issue. Our prior solution’s frequent downtime resulted in significant start-of-care delays, which negatively affected patient care and tarnished our reputation. In terms of usability, colleagues involved in the workflow have expressed appreciation for WorldView’s intuitive user interface.

Regarding your ongoing relationship with WorldView, what stands out the most to you?

In addition to confidence in the programs’ uptime and reliability, we have appreciated the customer-centered approach and collaboration that ensured the successful rollout at all of our agency offices.

Can you speak to the expertise level you feel WorldView brings as your automated document management solution?

As a national operation, centralized services require reliable, easy-to-use solutions. With a large average patient nationally and thousands of stakeholders in the communities we serve, our operational solutions cannot have downtime and reliability issues. WorldView’s reliability has met this expectation.

Do you view WorldView as a true extension of your business?

A reliable, cloud-based documentation management solution is important to our operations and care delivery.

Patrick Ramsey
Transforming Operations Office, Trinity Health

Absolute Home Health & Hospice Gains Efficiencies Through WorldView Solution

The Problem

Due to the number of patients and volume of paperwork required for each patient, Absolute Home Health and Hospice required 1 fulltime dedicated member as well as 3 other partially dedicated team members to meet this demand.

In addition to staffing challenges for medical record management, other challenges of the business included timely accessibility of medical record documents by field employees as well as the overall processing time of outstanding orders.

The Solution

For Absolute Home Health and Hospice, they were able to overcome the various challenges of document management and automation through a partnership and utilization of WorldView solutions.

As a result of this alliance, Absolute Home Health and Hospice was able to reduce the necessary personnel focused on medical record management by one full time employee. This employee was able to be reallocated and used in other areas of the business.

In addition to the reduction in personnel, Absolute Home Health and Hospice was able to reduce manual data entry errors by converting to an automated data entry process. Absolute Home Health and Hospice estimates that the measured ROI from implementation with WorldView was less than 60 days.

About Our Featured Partner

At Absolute Home Health and Hospice, our patients come first. Our team of dedicated profes-sionals work side by side with patients, physicians, and families to provide an effective, comfort-able and convenient care plan.

Our home care representatives are fully dedicated to satisfying our patient’s health care needs. We respond to our client’s needs quickly and professionally, helping the patient return to the highest level of function after illness, injury or surgery.

We recognize that as a company we are only as strong as the service we provide and that is why we take pride in everything we do.

Absolute is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) and has been in business since 1996.

TOGETHER WE SUCCEED

“WorldView’s ability and willingness to find or create solutions for our specific needs is commendable. We always get great customer service and truly value our relationship!”

Chris Singer -RN, CHPN
Director of Operations
Absolute Home Health & Hospice

We’re not the only one’s talking. Checkout what our customers have to say.

LivinRite came to WorldView because they were an existing KanTime customer and although they had a document management solution, were interested in the direct integration WorldView and KanTime had built. After onboarding WorldView, LivinRite realized more than just the efficiency and time savings the integration brought, but also some opportunities to continue to improve their document processes by leveraging the WorldView model.

WorldView’s dedicated team of resources gave LivinRite great insight on how to build a more streamlined flow to handle their medical records. Both teams produced a tailored process for LivinRite that fit perfectly with their business, team, and flow of work. “The customizations WorldView can offer made this a true partnership from the beginning.” –Jared Elliot, LivinRite.

Time spent on previous process with the other industry document management provider was more manual than WorldView, taking much more time. Previously having to write an order, download it, save it off, then upload in order to fax out, then attempt to keep its status updated was cumbersome. Once received, they then had to download and save to a desktop location in order to physically upload into KanTime. This was a constant strain on their team and on average was taking over 3 minutes to process each and every document. That adds up.

With WorldView, it ‘s now the click of a button and the tracking, checking in and out, and updates are all done by the system vs. needing hands on the documents. Not to mention the mobile application and added functionality offered by WorldView’s Mobile Complete solution for their clinicians.