Healthcare Document Management
Case Study: Health Advocates
Health Advocates helps patients in California receive Medicare and MediCal benefits for treatments that they undergo. They help both the patient and the medical facility. The patient gets their medical bills reduced or eliminated and the medical facility gets paid.
The Challenge
Covering 85 hospitals in California produces 40 to 50 new cases per day for Health Advocates. Each of these cases represents a stack of paper records. Medical bills, patient records, release forms, etc. As the company has grown, handling the cases in paper has overwhelmed the organization. Previously the paper files had to be physically moved from person to person and then locked away when not in use. Full time personnel were hired just to move and track the paper. As case workers processed the cases, they often needed to request additional records. The requests were in paper and had to be retrieved via courier or mailed to the medical facilities. This process took days and weeks to complete and added a tremendous cost to the process. The records were then sent to the case worker, again via courier, mail, and UPS or FedEx. The shipping was causing concern to the management team not only due to enforced HIPAA regulations; it was also adding cost and time to the case management process and the overall healthcare document management system.
The Solution
Health Advocates issued a competitive procurement and ultimately selected DocuVantage OnDemand® due to its ability to help Health Advocates maintain HIPAA compliance while providing its users a streamlined interface, amazing flexibility, and superior security.
The accounting department creates new cases in their core application called CUBS. Once the case is created, the accounting clerk executes a script that exports data from the new cases from CUBS and creates the case file in DocuVantage OnDemand. When these cases are created, the workflow automatically notifies the people at the medical facilities that the case has been created and they can now remotely scan the documents for each new case. Once the scanning is complete, the on-site person marks the task complete and accounting is notified. Now the case can be assigned to a case worker for processing. As the case worker is viewing the record in CUBS, they click a hot-key and the documents related to that case in DocuVantage OnDemand are displayed.
Health Advocates also sought an effecive healthcare records management system. At times, the case workers also need additional files from the medical facility. DocuVantage OnDemand, the case worker uses a request form that is routed to the person on site at the medical facility. The on-site person is notified via email that they have a new task. Once the additional records have been scanned, the on-site person marks the task as complete and the case manager is immediately notified that the records are ready for them. This workflow automation for healthcare records management reduces the time required to obtain document. The requests are always delivered in seconds and no longer take days to arrive or get lost in the mail.
Over 90 of their staff access and use DocuVantage OnDemand.
A Message from Ilkyung Karam of Health Advocates
"When I think back to our procurement process for picking a document management solution we spent a lot of time looking at a lot of different vendors. As a health care company we had very specific requirements and needed a system that would ensure that we were compliant with government regulations, especially HIPAA.
There are a lot of choices on the market. We chose DocuVantage OnDemand.
There were two main areas where they stood out. First as a company they listened to our requirements. It’s refreshing to deal with an organization which puts your success ahead of their desire to sell you a solution. Second, their product is flexible. We needed workflows that matched our requirements and their product, right out of the box, was flexible enough to accommodate our needs.
However you really have to look at both things together. A flexible product is an absolute requirement, but without an organization that is willing to listen to what you are trying to accomplish, it doesn’t matter how flexible the product is. With DocuVantage OnDemand we got both.
When we needed our workflows developed, Document Advantage listened, created and routed everything for our review and approval. It was an iterative process where both companies worked together extremely well.
If you need a flexible product right out of the box, then DocuVantage is the product you are looking for. And when you need to take your solution to the next level you won’t find a more responsive company than Document Advantage Corporation."