SHERBORN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Boston Software Systems™ today named Reese Walker, lead financial systems analyst at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital of Albany, Ga., the winner of the Third Annual Boston WorkStation™ User Excellence Award. This honor recognizes Walker for his successful and innovative use of Boston WorkStation to automate Medicare failed claims report processing. As a result, Phoebe Putney has been able to accelerate the recovery of millions of dollars in claims, reduce days in A/R and consistently reduce the failed claims amount by as much as 86 percent.
Medicare attaches many rules to claims processing, causing a high volume of claims for the hospital to review. If a diagnosis code, NPI number or other modifier is missing, Medicare will deny the claim. For Phoebe Putney, this was a big undertaking—on the order of 3,500 claims. Leyla Cox, the Medicare patient account rep at Phoebe Putney, would have to extract files, put them into an Excel spreadsheet and then correct errors and omissions, or make additions. She wasn’t able to keep up with the hundreds of incoming batches of error sets, but by targeting 10 with the biggest return, she could process 150 claims per day.
Cox reached out to Walker for help. Walker realized they could get more done and speed reimbursement if they automated the claims review process. Walker worked closely with Cox to understand the various steps of the workflow and used Boston WorkStation to create that automation. After using a data mining tool to sift through the failed claims reports, a series of Boston WorkStation scripts automatically compare data, make the required corrections to claims and produce a report showing claims requiring Cox’s expertise.
By automating this critical workflow, Phoebe Putney can now process 300 claims per hour. Its failed claims have dropped by as much as $20 million, and the hospital doesn’t need to hire additional full-time employees or pull other resources to help manage the failed claims report.
“Since using Boston WorkStation for a little more than a year, we have found numerous ways to automate manual tasks,” said Walker. “We want to reallocate peoples’ valuable time to areas which require more than just data entry. We found we had money sitting ready to be billed, and it took too much time to do this manually. Using Boston WorkStation allows us to work more quickly and efficiently, and fuel our revenue cycle.”
“Phoebe Putney is an excellent example of how leading hospitals of all sizes see the value in Boston WorkStation to accomplish a variety of critical workflow automation tasks throughout the organization. In this economy, hospitals are critically evaluating their processes to reduce inaccurate manual workflow and cost effectively improve operational, financial and clinical aspects of the organization,” said Sara McNeil, president of Boston Software Systems. “Our customers are proud of the results they are seeing with Boston WorkStation. Their investment is paying off quickly. By helping hospitals to reinvent their existing processes, Boston WorkStation saves months of work and thousands or millions of dollars, enabling staff and physicians to focus on their core competencies.”
Walker is lead financial systems analyst and manager of Phoebe Care Department at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. He is a 2004 graduate of Georgia Southern University with a bachelor of science degree from the School of Information Technology.
Founded in 1911, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital is one of Georgia’s oldest comprehensive regional medical centers. A 443-bed, not-for-profit teaching hospital, Phoebe is a regional center for oncology, cardiac and neonatal medicine. Located in Albany, Ga., Phoebe has more than 300 affiliated doctors and 3,600 professional staff, which deliver world-class healing and prevention to its community.
About Boston WorkStation™
Boston WorkStation is a workflow automation and integration technology that provides an environment for on-demand process innovation and development. Boston WorkStation allows organizations to automate common tasks throughout the organization including revenue cycle projects, interactions with Web sites, integrating new applications, systems and devices, and electronically monitoring and managing user activity.
About Boston Software Systems
Boston Software Systems is the leading standard for workflow automation and system integration software, enabling organizations to streamline complex business processes and improve productivity. Hundreds of organizations worldwide respond to regulatory and business initiatives by using Boston WorkStation technology to automate and improve processes throughout a variety of departments. Customers include more than 50 HCA hospitals, Mayo hospitals, Stanford Medical Center, CHRISTUS Health, Lutheran Health Network and Tenet Healthcare. Boston Software Systems partners with leading application and system vendors such as McKesson, Siemens, 3M, NCR and Emdeon. For more information, please visit the company’s Web site at www.bostonworkstation.com or call 866.653.5105.
Boston Software Systems, Boston WorkStation are trademarks of Boston Software Systems, Inc.
For more information:
Boston Software Systems
Margaret Mayer, 978-525-4831
margaretm@bossoft.com
or
Schwartz Communications
Davida Dinerman/Chris Poisson, 781-684-0770
bossoft@schwartz-pr.com
