Case Studies: Remote Coding
Best Practices: Productivity-Enhancing Platform and Workflow Management Tools
Baptist Health System Overcomes Staffing Issues by Deploying Latest Coding Technology
Technology solution enables system-wide restructuring of HIM.
Nationwide, HIM departments spend a significant amount of time and money on
recruiting and retaining certified coding professionals. Chronic staffing issues
and workload volume fluctuations require constant attention. Frustrated with
repeated vacancies and other HIM staffing challenges, Baptist Health System in
Alabama chose to deploy the latest coding workflow management technology,
Precyse Solutions’ PrecyseCode2X (PCode2X), and re-engineer the way the four
hospital group approached coding. In the few short months since Baptist’s
solution was implemented,
the return on investment has exceeded expectations.
THE CHALLENGE
Baptist Health is comprised of four hospitals, all located within the greater
Birmingham, AL area. Traditionally each hospital in the system has been staffed
with its own coders, reporting to a local facility Director of HIM. Corporate
Director of HIM, Chloe Phillips, noticed that the workload volumes and skill
sets required across the four hospitals and within each individual hospital
fluctuated considerably on a weekly and monthly basis. These variations led to
backlogs and overtime. Phillips had a vision for how to get in front of
Baptist’s coding challenges: to increase coder productivity and more effectively
contain costs, she needed to reorganize her teams into a system-centric, rather
than facility-centric, workgroup.
THE SOLUTION
To accomplish this, Phillips knew she needed a coding technology platform that
would enable her to share resources across all facilities and utilize
variable-cost outsourced resources for peak periods. PCode2X has enabled Philips
to create a structured coding pool from which all coders work on charts from all
facilities. Currently, the coders are still onsite working from the same
physical location as before. The coding function, however, has been centralized.
The PCode2X workflow management platform enables Baptist to access charts from
all four facilities. PCode2X aggregates the documentation that is both in
electronic format as well as paper-based and presents it in a single view for
the coders. In addition to facilitating a “load balancing” approach to coding,
the PCode2X platform also enables remote access to charts for review and audit.
Phillips hopes to ultimately have coders work from home, freeing up needed space
at the hospitals and providing another incentive to attract and retain quality
coders. In the long-term, Phillips notes, “Baptist will have a market advantage
by offering leading edge technology coupled with the flexibility of working
remotely. We’ll be recruiting worldwide rather than countywide.” Phillips had
more in mind for the Precyse technology beyond creating a centralized, remote
coding business model. Phillips also wanted to standardize coding best practices
for the enterprise. The transparency provided by PCode2X supports enables to
Phillips to monitor best practice utilization
across the workflow from all four institutions.
A cross-departmental goal mapped out by Phillips and Janice Ridling, VP of
Revenue Management, was to create a bridge strategy to an EHR. PCode2X allows
Baptist to have a legal health record that is a hybrid of paper and online
documentation. When Baptist does elect to implement a system-wide EHR, they will
be able to apply the legal record they now have to the new system and move to a
paperless environment more efficiently and rapidly. Ridling explains, “Given the
state of the economy and an uncertain national healthcare reimbursement
strategy, we at Baptist are placing a special emphasis and scrutiny on the
expenditure of capital dollars. Precyse was able to work with us to ensure that
we obtained the projected ROI while providing all of the shortand
long-term coding technology and functionality that was needed.” Baptist
implemented the new technology solution in only four months.
THE RESULTS
Two months post-implementation of all four hospitals, Phillips has already
seen an average improvement in coding productivity of between 15% and 30% in the
following record types: Inpatient, Emergency Department, Ambulatory Surgeries
and Observations, with quality scores averaging 2 to 3% above previous
standards.
Additional efficiencies and cost savings are anticipated as the workflow and
process improvement changes are fully realized. Phillips has done an excellent
job of measuring the staff’s acceptance and approval of the new tools and
workflow process. In a recent survey, the coders gave the Precyse platform an
average of good to very good ratings and the majority of the coders agree that
the technology has improved their coding productivity performance.
Baptist Health
Total Licensed Beds:
1,576
Citizens Baptist
122 beds
Princeton Baptist
499 beds
Shelby Baptist
192 beds
Walker Baptist
267 beds
Inpatients Served:
36,258 system-wide annually
Outpatient Procedures:
347,976 system-wide annually
Births:
2,611 system-wide annually
Physicians:
More than 520 active medical staff members
Residency Programs:
79 residents