October 2020

Celebration Time

PowerHealth is 25 years old!

There was no way we were going to let this occasion pass without celebration. Consequently, within our current environment it has meant finding creative alternatives to celebrate our special anniversary.

We’re excited to share some of our activities with you and would also like to take this opportunity to thank you, our clients, for your contribution to our success.

Plus, we’re delighted to share news of our national deployment in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (see details below). To be awarded such a prestigious contract is an honour and a privilege, that helps mark this very special 25th Anniversary year.

The PowerHealth team

PowerHealth News

Our 18th National / State-wide Deployment

We’re excited to share that we have commenced the national rollout across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of our patient level costing system PowerPerformance Manager (PPM).

The project is part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, in which the health sector is undergoing major transformational reforms aimed at delivering substantial improvements in quality, efficiency, and safety.

Aiming to deliver a clinical costing solution to 291 hospitals across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we were awarded the highly contested contract ahead of a large number of high-profile multinational companies.

The procurement process was incredibly thorough, and consisted of three stages over a number of years, which resulted in a clear definition of the requirements that vendors had to meet.

Kicking off from Dubai

For the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia project, we are excited to be bringing together a team of costing experts from our Adelaide and Quebec offices.

Our initial team of 15 staff members commenced work on the project in Dubai and are now in Saudi Arabia. We have also started to build on our team with local talent.

PowerHealth will make the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia our Middle East Head Office and look to use this group of highly experienced professionals to expand to the rest of the region through other national contracts.

Improving Health Unit Performance - $260K result

Coding is an important element of Health Unit performance, because if patients are grouped to a lower complexity DRG, then they will appear to be high cost and inefficient, when in fact it is a coding/clinical documentation issue.

We have been working with clients using PowerPerformance Manager (PPM) to identify low complexity cases which have stayed a long time for recoding. In one of our studies, of the 100 cases initially identified in PPM, a 3rd improved the NWAU/funding by a total of $260K or an average of $8K per case. We are now working with clients to prepare Casemix Education sheets by specialty and encouraging a greater involvement of coders with clinical teams to improve clinical documentation on an ongoing basis and ensure these results continue to improve.

Please feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more.

Congratulations - Parkville Precinct's New Electronic Medical Record Go Live

Congratulations to The Royal Melbourne Hospital, The Royal Women's Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre who have gone live with the Parkville precinct's new Electronic Medical Record (EMR). These three sites now join the Royal Children’s Hospital on the EMR powered by EPIC.

PowerHealth supported the billing aspect of the project by updating the existing integrations with our billing system PowerBilling & Revenue Collection (PBRC).

Strong partnerships with The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre saw PowerHealth work collaboratively to implement alongside the complex EMR project. Importantly this was achieved without disruption to the usual billing processes and revenue collection.

PowerHealth is proud to have been a part of this successful project as part of our ongoing support of these Health Services, especially during such challenged times.

Q&A Session with PHS Costing Expert

In case you missed it, last quarter we released our information session on Costing during the COVID-19 crisis. The session focussed on helping costing teams meet their costing obligations in relation to costing for COVID-19. If you missed our session, we welcome you to view the 25-minute presentation and listen at your convenience. The recorded session is available HERE.

PowerHealth's 25th Anniversary Celebrations

No birthday is complete without cake!

Once back in the office, we kicked off our birthday celebrations with cake! It was BIG and delicious!

Thank you to you, our clients

Thank you to you, our clients, for your contribution to our success. To celebrate our birthday milestone, we gave away 25 PowerHealth birthday treats, Edible Bloom arrangements for our clients to share within their teams.

Clients were asked to enter a raffle draw and our 25 winners were chosen at random.

We have loved hearing about these treats being enjoyed and for a number of clients working from home, we are also really pleased that they chose to donate their prize to the frontline workers at their hospital.

Over the years we have formed wonderful partnerships with our clients. We asked a few of our longer term associates to share with us their favourite memories from the past 25 years and we are thrilled with the responses we received…

Birthdays are for Sharing

Birthdays are for sharing and one of the team members from our Quebec office, Qile Wu, is also having a 25th celebration. So, we wanted to share a little about our 25th birthday buddy.

Qile is a Data Analyst in the PowerSanté performance team, with a focus on clinical activities, clinical performance and cost per trajectory of care. She is currently working on the development of the performance analysis dashboard.

Qile is from Guangzhou China, which is also her favourite holiday destination as it means reuniting with family. She also loves visiting Orleans in France where she lived for 3 years.

Watching TV and playing tennis are favourite past times. Qile’s favourite food is Dim sums and we wonder if she also loves blue M&M’s, as coincidentally they turned 25 this year too!

Qile pictured (centre), with PowerSanté colleagues Julien and Marc at a conference last year

Talking blue M&Ms, last month we asked our team a trivia question about what we are sharing our 25th Anniversary with. They were greeted with the answer as they arrived at work the next day.

The Celebration Continues

We look forward to sharing the next instalment of our anniversary celebrations via our social media and in our December newsletter.

PowerHealth Community

Loki the suPAW star!

In the past month our team has supported the Special Children’s Christmas Party and also Loki, in his efforts to raise funds for assistance dogs for kids in need. Loki is our PBRC team member, Kimberly’s cute and well trained Maltese/Schitszu and is being a suPAW star in the biggest doggie dress-up for Petember! Each week in September Loki dressed up to showed off his PAWsonality! Petember raises funds and awareness for Variety Assistance Dogs. These PAWsome animals change the lives of kids living with Autism, Anxiety and Epilepsy.

PowerHealth Social

Holey Moley! The PowerHealth team had a great evening of mini golf this month (at Holey Moley). Whilst no one proved to be PGA potentials, honourable mentions can go to our joint winners Phil, Nick and Kieran.

Thanks to the PowerHealth Social Club for organising the get together.

Back in the office and feeling a little sleepy mid-afternoon?

It may be the change of season or for those people back in the office, the change in environment which is making you sleepy in the afternoon? If you’re longing for a latte mid-afternoon, you can actually blame your body clock. “A sense of sleepiness can occur seven to nine hours after our wake up time due to the brain’s drop in alertness,” explains Fitbit sleep advisor Allison T. Siebern, PhD, consulting assistant professor at Stanford University Sleep Medicine Center and director of the Sleep Health Integrative Program at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center in North Carolina.

Unfortunately, sleepiness (especially if back in the office!) can leave you drinking too much coffee or reaching for sugary snacks to give you a pick me up. To avoid potentially unhealthy habits, try these wake-me-up tips instead. Read TIPS >>>

Some Extra 25th Anniversary Reflections...

We thought we'd end our newsletter with a few extra 25th Anniversary reflections we received. Thanks to our clients for sharing their memories with us.