18th December 2020
Message from the PowerHealth Team
In our 25th year we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your contribution to our success. We could not have done it without you.
Wishing you and your family, health, happiness and prosperity for the year ahead.
From all the team at PowerHealth
PowerHealth News
Immediate ROI Objectives being met at Eastern Health
One of Melbourne’s largest metropolitan public health services, Eastern Health (EH) has been utilising PowerHealth’s costing product, PowerPerformance Manager (PPM), for more than 15 years.
The introduction of Power Billing and Revenue Collection (PBRC) into the organisation has seen an additional collaboration with PowerHealth in the area of billing.
The organisation replaced 17 billing systems with PBRC as its enterprise-wide billing system, bringing about positive change for both patients and staff.
The implementation of PBRC represented a fantastic opportunity for EH to streamline its billing processes.
Improvements in patient experience were a major focus of the project, along with increases in revenue capture.
The EH team demonstrated wonderful professionalism and agility launching in a COVID-19 world, transitioning to full working from home for the project team, and 80% for the Patient Accounts team.
Although very early days, the project has already demonstrated some positive results including.
- During the formation of the Business case, a review of existing system and process capability led Eastern Health to forecast that 6% of revenue was not raised due to process and system complexity. A 7% revenue leakage for Inpatient revenue has been solved, exceeding the year one business case estimate.
- 13 billing systems have been consolidated into PBRC, simplifying processes, and improving effectiveness
NEW RELEASE: PBRC is Going Mobile
In 2021 PowerHealth’s product releases will create additional efficiencies and ensure your billing revenue is maximised.
We are excited to announce that the first release of PBRC Mobile will be available early next year and will lead the way in simplifying bedside service capture to feed the PBRC automated billing process.
Eastern Health has already recognised its potential efficiency and will be working with PowerHealth to be first to market.
We have recognised that the ability to capture services accurately at the time of consultations requires mobility.
PBRC mobile:
- Increases revenue by maximizing timely billing. A mixture of private / public billing can be lodged with ease minimising the chance of lost revenue in the event of financial class changes.
- Improves cash flow by accelerating the billing process. The clinician can easily approve services as they are raised either in PBRC Mobile or directly into PBRC.
- Creates efficiencies and ensures all services are captured and charged by avoiding redundant paperwork.
- Creates accountability, traceability and audit functionality.
Contact our PBRC team if you would like more information.
PCSI Event – Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare
In November, PowerHealth was invited to contribute to the Patient Classification Systems International (PCSI) online event titled the ‘Impact on COVID-19 on Healthcare’.
PCSI wanted to tell the story behind different countries’ responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic and its online event investigated the impact of COVID-19 on our working environment, looking at the challenges faced and the learnings so far.
Presented by Phil Moore from the PowerPerformance Manager (PPM) team, PowerHealths’ presentation explored these issues while advocating the need for the consistent treatment of COVID-19 related costs.
The full presentation will be available from the 18th December via the PCSI website
NEW PBRC Dashboards at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre –
Efficient and Effective Information Analysis
Dashboards are designed for quick analysis and allow users to rapidly answer important questions about their business. Dashboard functionality is available in all 19.x+ versions of PowerBilling and Revenue Collection (PBRC).
Flora MacInnes, Finance Systems Improvement Manager at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, wanted an easy, visual way to monitor activity, worklists, billing, and rejections.
She recognised if problems were found she could then delve into the detailed reports and extracts that PBRC provides. This became especially important following their new Electronic Medical Records (EMR) go-live.
Working with the PowerHealth team, Dashboards were configured as part of the implementation of their new EMR to PBRC.
Ms MacInnes said, “We were hoping that dashboards would allow us to quickly identify issues without having to run multiple reports and searches.
“The dashboards have been used extensively since go-live as we can easily review activity, worklists, billing and rejections at the click of a button. Being able to review variable timescales (for example 3, 12 or 24 months) allows us to identify trends easily.”
Dashboards encompassing inpatient, outpatient and radiation therapy activity were created, each of which can be run on demand to create separate charts for activity, worklists, billing, and rejections
Ms MacInnes said, “2020 has been a very different year with COVID and the introduction of our new EMR. This type of graphical representation has allowed us to identify exactly what is related to COVID, EMR and normal activity.
"Having the dashboards gave Peter Mac confidence that the EMR – PBRC interface was working correctly and allowed us to identify any issues quickly.
“The efficiency gains since developing dashboards are huge. To manually produce the same graphical view of billing that the dashboards create would normally have taken us hours and this activity would need to be repeated every few days”.
Nikhil Patwardhan, Senior Billing Consultant at PowerHealth, said “Dashboards are a data visualisation tool which create an objective view of performance and provide a great foundation for associated discussion and further drill down.
“The Peter Mac dashboards provide a great basis for future billing optimisation, of which planning is already underway” he said.
Overseas Claiming via Medicare/Eclipse for PBRC-IE
We are happy to share that Overseas Claiming via Medicare/Eclipse for PBRC-IE is now available. We're proud that this was developed in record time, based on feedback from clients. Whilst only for a small number of clients, we know it will be valued as it will avoid manually processing the data.This has been a real group effort with development, consulting, and testing all playing a part.
Riyadh Office Taking Shape
Our latest national PPM deployment in Saudi Arabia is progressing well.
Since arriving in Saudi Arabia in late September, PowerHealth has been able to bolster its team of 15 expat costing experts with approximately 20 new local staff, as well as open its new Riyadh office, which recently received its new signage.
How do we instil a good incident reporting culture?
Tip from our TPSC Cloud Patient Safety & Quality team
In order to learn from incidents, it is important that all incidents and near incidents are reported. Unfortunately, reporting an incident is still often considered an administrative burden that is difficult and redundant.
So how do you still ensure a good reporting culture? Below we provide some framework conditions, including:
- Ensure a safe and open reporting culture
- Make it clear why incidents need to be reported. After all, each incident is a learning opportunity and an opportunity to improve safety in the workplace
- Make reporting quick and easy with an online form that is always accessible via both desktop and mobile devices.
- Ensure that only those questions are asked that are required for the initial registration and analysis.
- Show what happens after a report has been made, what the follow-up actions are, who is involved and what is expected of the notifying person
- Ensure feedback of the results to the notifying person and the rest of the department. When people see that a report is actually addressed, the willingness to report will increase. Also show when an improvement action is scheduled based on the incident
- Involve employees by requesting further information and having them contribute ideas for improvement actions and the assessment thereof.
HFMA Australia National Congress 2020
It has been great to see our business partners adapt to the current climate and offer online events. We enjoyed our recent involvement at the HFMA Australia National Congress 2020. This event focussed on The New Business of Health.
Following a challenging year, the presentations considered key challenges, changes and what the 'new normal' may look like.
Values Award Winner
Congratulations to Kieran Wood from our Development team, the recent recipient of our Values Award for Customer Focus.
Kieran was acknowledged for the great feedback he has been receiving from customers on support tasks.
PowerHealth's 25th Anniversary Celebrations
Start your engines!
This quarter our 25th anniversary celebrations continued, and we decided to have some fun. We asked our staff to “Start your engines”!
Launched in December 1994, 1995 was officially the first year of Daytona and so we thought what better way to continue our 25th Anniversary celebrations with the chance for the team to get behind the wheel and race their way to victory (plus also have some great lunch time fun).
Carrying on with the celebrations, our team also enjoyed a company lunch 1995 style, with stuffed crust pizza. Another 1995 invention!
PowerHealth Community
Christmas Decorating Competition
Like most activities this year, our annual Christmas Decorating Competition did not escape a COVID safe modification.
Instead of a team desk decorating, individuals were asked to dress their individual pod in Christmas cheer.
Our regular judging panel (the children of the PowerHealth team), was replaced temporarily this year by the Social Committee, which awarded the Best Decoration Prize to Sumedha Gupta.
End of Year Celebrations
It has been a year that has had it challenges, so the opportunity to sit down, relax and reflect together was well received last week by the Adelaide team.
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