Successes - Medical Center Clinic
Fortis Helps Premier Health Center Cure the Explanation of Benefits Blues

Summary
Medical Center Clinic in Pensacola has built a 70-year reputation grounded in exceptional and innovative care. Serving the residents of Northwest Florida and South Alabama, this health care system encompasses a variety of nationally recognized specialty services and programs and is a leader in putting technology to work for its patients.

Challenge
Medical Center Clinic sought to efficiently manage medical records, ancillary paperwork, invoices and insurance forms to improve administrative processes necessary in providing top quality healthcare. Approximately ten years ago, the organization’s Explanation of Benefits (EOB) group implemented Fortis. At that time, the EOB group was spending $25,000 annually on microfilm, in addition to the salary dollars for a 60-person records room staff. “The process of retrieving EOBs was difficult and time-consuming,” says Steve Spear, IT Manager at Medical Center Clinic. The cumbersome process began when an EOB was requested either by a patient or insurance company. A copy of the EOB was requested via interoffice mail which then began a microfiche search. Once located, the EOB was printed and forwarded back to the requesting staff member.

Solution
Collaborating with Don Mayberry of IKON Office Solutions, Medical Center Clinic implemented Fortis document management software making the EOBs available electronically. Through the use of Fortis, the typical response time on EOB-related questions has been drastically cut from several days to only a few minutes. “Now employees can access the EOB in real time while the person requesting information is on the phone. We have the necessary information in hand to assist us in resolving the issue,” Spear says. In the past, only the Central Business Office had access to EOBs, but with Fortis, physician practice managers and front office staff can access the documents via the Web improving customer service.

Building on the EOB group’s experience, the Medical Records group decided to use Fortis to supplement the functionality of their electronic medical records (EMR) system. Fortis captures and archives ancillary documents, such as correspondence, living wills, and insurance forms. With Fortis, doctors, nurses and medical staff can find patient information by logging on and entering a patient number rather than by looking through a paper file. The Medical Center Clinic reduced staff in Medical Records as a result of the combined efficiencies achieved through implementation of Fortis as it relates to the EMR system. According to Spear, the software solutions paid for themselves within the first year of operation.

The Medical Center Clinic’s Human Resources department also uses Fortis extensively, taking advantage of assigning permissions to different document types for multi-level security. Every piece of information about an employee is archived in the repository, but access is restricted to those who have a business reason to view each subset of documents. There is a secure area for employee health records that only the employee health nurse can access. Other employee records are confidential to Human Resources. In addition, there is a section for annual appraisals stored in the appropriate manager’s folder. Eeach line manager has sub-rights to that folder. When a manager conducts an annual appraisal, the document is scanned into Fortis. Human Resources can review the document without having to schedule a meeting with the manager or make photocopies. The managers can also access the appraisals from their desktops without involving Human Resources.

The Ambulatory Surgery Center made a recent transition and is in the process of scanning paper charts into Fortis. The process of adding a new department to the Fortis system was easier than anticipated. “It was surprising, but we were able to add the Ambulatory Surgery Center records to Fortis without increasing the number of staff on our scanning team,” Spear says. In addition Fortis is being used by Accounting, IT, Risk Management, Provider Enrollment, and Administration.

Medical Center Clinic maintains strict HIPAA compliance standards. “The Fortis Audit Trail is vital to tracking viewed documentation,” says Spear.

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