Problem
When Chris Washick, RN, CASC started as the administrator of Triangle Orthopaedics Surgery Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, the center’s important documents were scattered between four different locations.
Triangle kept binders full of paper policies and other essential files. They also had multiple electronic copies housed on a local shared drive and a separate storage system for contracts through their management company. Staff education lived on a service called HealthStream.
Triangle’s 30 staff members and 75 credentialed providers perform between 2,300 and 2,500 outpatient surgery cases each year in the center’s two operating rooms. The paperwork behind all of these procedures was difficult for administrators to maintain. Failure to do so put providers’ licenses at risk. Credentialing alone was time-consuming and expensive; Triangle would typically hire additional administrative staff or outsource to another company to manage the process.
Washick joined Triangle shortly before the center’s latest AAAHC re-accreditation survey, and she found that several of Triangle’s time-sensitive documents were outdated. Washick found that while updated policies made it into the paper manual, the shared drive versions of those same policies often weren’t up to date. AAAHC standards require that all policies and procedures be reviewed and updated annually, but since Triangle’s policies lived in several different locations, it was hard to track which policies had been reviewed and approved by the board of directors and governing board. And though Triangle administrators did their best to distribute updated policies, there was also no way to prove that staff and providers had read the policies, or that they’d seen the newest version. North Carolina requires health care facilities to maintain accreditation to be licensed in the state. This lack of paper
trail can put facilities’ accreditation and state licensure at risk.
As Washick and Triangle’s management team prepared for the AAAHC survey, they spent weeks going over the standards, updating policies and trying to organize paperwork. They determined there had to be a more efficient and proactive way to manage Triangle’s policies and give staff and providers access to the information and forms they needed.
“Leadership and administrators [at ASC’s] wear so many different hats—they do so many different things. PowerDMS is like a personal assistant. I would not even consider taking a position in another center if they didn’t agree to get PowerDMS. It’s seriously life-changing from an administrator standpoint.”
Chris Washick, RN, CASC - ADMINISTRATOR, TRIANGLE ORTHOPAEDICS SURGERY CENTER, RALEIGH, NC
Solution
Triangle Orthopaedics now manages all its important documents in PowerDMS.
PowerDMS is single, unified repository for all of the center’s contracts, business associates’ agreements, policies, forms, credentialing documentation and preference cards. Triangle also plans to move their online staff training and courses for PowerDMS in the near future.
This centralized location makes it easier for Washick to keep all of Triangle’s documents up to date, cutting the time she spends on credentialing and policy updates. She can even set automatic renewal reminders on time-sensitive documents to ensure that critical documentation is reviewed and updated annually, or as needed.
PowerDMS ensures that every Triangle staff member and provider sees the correct and most current version of each policy. Instead of updating policies in two different locations, Washick and the rest of the management team, can quickly revise a policy in PowerDMS and send it to the board of directors for approval. Once approved, employees automatically receive an email notifying them to log into PowerDMS to review and electronically sign the newest version of the policy. They can collect a record of those signatures to prove that every employee read and acknowledged the documents. Since everything in the center is protocol-driven, this gives the management team peace of mind that the staff has the information they need to do their jobs well.
PowerDMS’s AAAHC assessment tool also makes the accreditation process much smoother, letting Washick and the Director of Nursing easily cross-walk Triangle’s policies and compliance documentation with AAAHC standards. PowerDMS also provides a complete audit trail for each document, which allows Washick to prove Triangle has met AAAHC’s requirement to review each policy annually.
ROI
Along with making the accreditation process much smoother, keeping all of Triangle’s important documents in PowerDMS saves Washick and the management team significant administrative time and energy.
Washick used to spend 10 or 12 hours each month managing the credentialing and recredentialing process for the center’s 75 providers. With PowerDMS, it takes her approximately two hours per month. Prior to joining Triangle, Washick had to outsource credentialing at her last two centers. Because Triangle had PowerDMS, Washick didn’t need to look at outsourcing credentialing. The cost to credential a new provider totals roughly $450, while re-credentialing would cost between $150 and $200 per provider every-other year. PowerDMS eliminates the need to outsource, saving the center $11,250 every two years just on re-credentialing.
Problem
|
Solution
|
Confusion caused by four different locations for critical contentROI
Ten administrative hours a month saved on managing provider credentialing No need to outsource credentialing, saving the center $11,250 Ability to re-allocate funds for staff education