Client Case Studies

Respiratory Care:
Sutter Health SUNY Upstate Medical University Sarasota Memorial Health Care System Methodist Hospital Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Texas Children's Hospital St. Rita's Medical Center

Rehabilitative Medicine:
Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation Johns Hopkins Bayview Lancaster General Banner Good Samaritan Texas Children's Hospital North Colorado Medical Center University of Utah Hospital

MediServe Client Impact Case Study - Rehabilitative Medicine | Respiratory Care

Texas Children's Hospital

Texas Children's Hospital is a 737 bed hospital affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and located in the Texas Medical Center - Houston, Texas. Texas Children's is ranked 4th among pediatric hospitals nationwide by Child magazine and 5th by U.S. News & World Report.

Texas Children's implemented MediLinks® in the Respiratory Care department in August 2002 and in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in September 2002.

Prior to MediLinks, the Respiratory Care department used manual documentation and manual charge entry into IDX. Staffing levels were previously determined by MS Excel spreadsheets, where therapists called in a "count", entered the count into the spreadsheet, and the FTE's required were calculated based on standard performance times. Orders notification was managed by RN/Unit Secretaries. Rehabilitation also used manual documentation and manual charge entry into IDX. Scheduling was managed in two systems, IDX and MS Outlook.

MediLinks enabled Texas Children's to support computerized documentation, automatic billing on chart entry, orders management (including forecasting and adjusting staffing levels), and comprehensive electronic reporting.

After implementation, Texas Children's eliminated $3M in undercharges per year, decreased documentation time by 28% (=8.4 FTE's per year) and eliminated charge denials due to incomplete charting.

Texas Children's started with about 250 users and now pushes the application to over 700 computers. MediLinks interfaces to IDX for both ADT and batch billing, and to Logician for Outpatient EMR.

Texas Children's Hospital was recognized as a 2004 MediServe Information Systems Rehabilitation Impact Award Winner.

Financial Impact

• Eliminated $3M in undercharges per year (Respiratory and Rehab)
• Rev/total FTE up 13% (Respiratory)
• Productivity up 23% - 226 uos/month to 278 uos/month (Respiratory)

Clinical Impact

• Decreased documentation time 28% (=8.4 FTE's, Respiratory and Rehab)