Client Case Studies
MediServe Client Impact Case Study - Respiratory Care
Sutter Health - Sacramento Sierra Region
"$10M Improvement in Total Net Revenue.
11% Net Revenue Improvement."
Sutter Roseville Medical Center
Roseville, CASutter Health is a family of not-for-profit hospitals and physician organizations that share resources and expertise to advance health care quality. Serving more than 100 communities in Northern California, Sutter Health doctors and hospitals are regional leaders in pediatric, obstetrical, heart, and cancer care. Sutter Health – Sacramento Sierra Region includes Sutter Memorial, Sutter General, Sutter Davis, Sutter Roseville Medical Center, and Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital.
Prior to the MediLinks implementation, each of the five hospitals used completely paper based documentation for all continuums of care. Daily treatment notes, progress notes, and discharge summaries were gathered using paper charting. The billing process was not uniform across all five hospitals. Two hospitals used an administrative assistant to document patient care and an electronic billing system to create a charge for each patient. The three other hospitals manually calculated each patient account (no electronic system) and the results were sent to a central billing office.
Sutter Health began its search in 2002 to find an appropriate clinical information system for the Respiratory Care departments in each hospital. The hospital system provided its requirements to the Information Technology department, which enabled them to seek out the best solution. The IT department narrowed the search to three vendors. Toward the end of the evaluation process, MediServe and Clinivision were selected as finalists. The MediLinks product was selected because of its comprehensive staff scheduling & workload assignment capabilities and the ability to interface to every major Health Information System. Sutter also selected MediLinks because of its ability to run standard management reports.
Sutter Roseville Medical Center went live with MediLinks in 2004. In 2005 Sutter Memorial, Sutter General, Sutter Davis, and Sutter Auburn Faith all went live with MediLinks. Today, all five hospitals run reports (batch billing), which are all sent to a central billing office that populates the billing system. By 2006, all five hospitals achieved significant improvement in both charge capture and billing accuracy rates. Sutter experienced a 98.8% billing accuracy in procedures not captured and 99.35% accuracy in billing that was not documented.
MediLinks has helped each of the five Respiratory departments save a significant amount of time and money. In addition, MediLinks helps run all daily business activities. For example, all equipment maintenance and management is tracked in MediLinks. Process improvement methods are also in place to query the database to review patient treatments or length of time on a ventilator. MediLinks monitors personnel records, including staff education, orientation, and competencies completed by staff members each year. MediLinks helps track patient treatments & procedures through documentation at the bedside and then queries the database to understand which staff members have specific experience with different competencies. Lastly, MediLinks assists with regular departmental assessments that help implement effective budgeting and planning processes.
After completing a one year ROI study (data from all five hospitals), Sutter experienced the following results:
Financial Impact
- $10M Improvement in Total Net Revenue
- 11% Net Revenue Improvement
Clinical Impact
- 11% Increase in Charge Capture
- 9.9% Increase in Therapist Productivity (measured in labor hours/unit of service)
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