Rapid City Regional Hospital Improved Provider Enrollment

Impact:

Rapid City Regional Hospital began using EchoOneApp and experienced the following improvements:

• Moved provider enrollment from a paper based system to an electronic one
• In eight months, improved aging receivables due to untimely enrollment by 97%, reducing the outstanding amount from $350,000 to $12,000
• Improved physician satisfaction due to reduced time to complete enrollment applications

The Challenge:

Rapid City Regional Hospital is part of the Regional Health system of care, which includes six hospitals in western South Dakota. Licensed for 329 beds, Rapid City is the largest hospital in the system. The hospital’s Medical Staff Services credentials and privileges approximately 600 providers at Rapid City Regional Hospital, as well as 215 providers across the five other network hospitals. Of those, approximately 400 providers are employed, for which they also complete provider enrollment with various payers.

In 2010, increasing write-offs for untimely provider enrollment prompted Rapid City to make additional evaluation of its internal credentialing and provider enrollment system. While their credentialing and privileging processes were electronic and efficient, provider enrollment processes had not changed for many years. The hospital decided that there were efficiencies to be gained in finding a new solution.

Solution:

For any organization navigating the dynamics of healthcare credentialing and privileging, this valuable tool has much to offer.

After months of discussion, software research, and demonstrations, Rapid City purchased EchoOneApp product in April 2011. With the assistance of OneApp, provider enrollment transitioned from a completely paper-based process within Patient Financial Services to an electronic process within Medical Staff Services, which facilitated substantial improvements in efficiency, FTE expenses, and outstanding receivables.

Results:

At the time of OneApp implementation, the hospital was faced with approximately $350,000 in aging receivables at risk due to untimely enrollment. Within 8 months, this was reduced to $12,000, and the FTE was reduced from 1.5 to 0.7. As a result of her efforts, their provider enrollment coordinator Christie Nelson was awarded the honorary title of "Million Dollar Baby" and given a crown and sash to wear at the party celebrating her role in this accomplishment. With the financial improvements, they also saw improvement in physician satisfaction, as the automated features provided by OneApp reduced the time to complete enrollment applications and eliminated redundancy in completing the same information across multiple applications.

When asked about working with Echo, Ms. Elliott states, "As we worked through implementation, Sy.Med staff was extremely helpful. Training was well organized and thorough. Subsequent support and customer service was outstanding." She adds, "Overall, Rapid City’s satisfaction with this product was and continues to be very high, and OneApp contributed substantially to the success of our project." Now that they are fully functional with the product, it continues to meet their needs with well-designed reports and work-flow tracking features.