Family Medical Group Case Study
Family Medical Group is a family practice with five providers that sees an average of 1,800 patients per month.
Family Medical Group was introduced to SIS NW during our search for a lockbox solution. We have been on an electronic medical record system since 2007, but we continued to operate our business office in the same manner it had been run for years. We had paper everywhere! Our employees were constantly duplicating work. What we found with SIS NW is that they went beyond being a lockbox provider. They took the time to gain an in-depth understanding of our practice and our work flow before offering us a solution.
SIS NW went above and beyond to solve our complex work flow. Thanks to SIS NW our change from paper to a paperless business office has been transparent. SIS NW took the time to understand our needs and create a plan of action that not only solved our problems, but changed our processes so that we can do what we do best, practice medicine.
In addition to providing a great lockbox solution that has eliminated the risk and potential liability of having employees make bank deposits, SIS NW also provided a solution for managing our EOB forms. Our billing staff used to post insurance and private payments to the patient accounts from the paper forms. Now they all have dual monitors and post directly from the images. This provides better HIPAA compliance because there is no chance of patient information being seen while in a pile on someone’s desk or information being taken from the office.
We have one biller that works off-site that has secure access to the EOB’s through a web browser. This helps reduce costs for providing office space and allows the biller to telecommute.
The lockbox solution makes it next to impossible to embezzle funds. All deposits are done off-site by a trusted third party and all postings are also done off-site. Any authorized user can review deposits, check copies, and EOB’s from their PC. All user activity can be easily audited which is a huge benefit. We can easily see who has accessed patient information and the date and time of all user activity is automatically recorded. The search functionality SISNW provided makes it incredibly easy to locate an EOB. We now have all of our records electronically backed up off-site for disaster recovery purposes.
The increased efficiency can be directly translated into time and money. We were able to eliminate one staff person and drastically reduced our expenses for off-site storage and paper and filing supplies. We no longer have to pay salary and mileage for employees to make trips to the bank. We have calculated that our annual savings are over $50,000 per year. That amounts to an extra $10,000 per doctor in earnings each year. The space we’ve saved will allow us to add two additional practitioners.
We no longer have the archaic business office where employees spend time opening up envelopes, standing by a copy machine making paper copies of checks, spending money on “paper products” to produce “paper batches” and most importantly traveling outside the office to go to the bank. We now manage our accounts receivable without ever having to get up from our desks. We also have a more “green” workplace. It was the most painless and transparent workflow change I have ever experienced.
SIS NW is not only our lockbox provider, but our partner at Family Medical Group Northeast, PC
Keirene Adams – Practice Administrator
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